Introducing Cohort Two of AIR

This week, we’re welcoming Cohort Two of AI Residency (AIR), a NYC-based startup residency, investing in teams building human-centered AI products that move the world forward. From hundreds of applicants, we selected eleven teams building at the frontiers of spatial computing, embodied intelligence, and agentic infrastructure.

It’s an incredible cohort of founders who share conviction that the next era of computing isn’t about more prompts; it’s about technology that understands context, respects privacy, and seamlessly weaves itself into the texture of daily life.

These teams are building the interfaces and foundations that will define our relationship with machines for decades to come. We’re beyond excited to support them:

Spec

Spec is building the first ambient computer—a proactive AI that lives across your Mac and iPhone and quietly runs your digital life in the background. Instead of waiting for prompts, Spec connects memory and context across iMessage, email, Slack, calendar, browser history, and meeting notes to prep meetings, draft replies, and surface what matters before you ask. It’s privacy-first, local-only, and designed to help people step out of digital chaos and back into the real world.

Ben Taylor: Founder & CEO

Sandbar

Sandbar is an AI-native wearable platform rethinking how humans interact with machines. Its first product, Stream, is a ring designed as “a mouse for voice,” enabling note-taking, AI interaction, and music control through subtle, embodied gestures. Built at the intersection of human–computer interfaces, AI design, and wearable computing, Sandbar imagines a future where AI is accessed quietly and continuously—without screens, friction, or interruption.

Mina Fahmi: Founder & CEO

Kirak Hong: Founder & CTO

General Intuition

General Intuition is a frontier gaming AI research lab and public-benefit corporation spun out of Medal. They’re building foundation models with deep spatial‑temporal reasoning from billions of gameplay clips to power intelligent in-game agents and world models, with longer-term applications in autonomous robots, vehicles, and search-and-rescue drones.

Pim de Witte: Founder & CEO (+ AIR Advisor!)

PPL

PPL is a next-generation, AI-native digital world where characters live, play, and form relationships. Built in the lineage of Gen Z platforms like Roblox and Discord, PPL rethinks world-building and content creation for an era where AI is abundant, interactive, and emotionally expressive. Their long-term ambition: create the largest dataset of authentic human–AI emotional interactions, unlocking a critical foundation for empathetic AI and future consumer robotics.

Alex Hofmann — Founder & CEO

JJ Aguhob — Founder & CPO

Stefan Heinrich — Founder & CMO

Bennett Lee — Founder, Engineering

Kairo

Kairo is a science-backed visualization coach bringing elite mental training into everyday routines. Using proven sport psychology and AI, Kairo delivers personalized, audio-guided visualizations that immerse athletes in real-world training and competition—building confidence and improving performance under pressure. Their mission is enable athletes of all ages and sports to train the mental side of sport with the same rigor as the physical.

James Veraldi: Founder & CEO

Chanhtha Thach: Founder & Head of Growth

Jim Doorley: Founding Team & Head of Performance Psychology

Sorcerics

Sorcerics (SOL) is an ambient AI startup from former senior Google AI & Waymo engineers that builds an on‑device vision AI hub for “zero‑command” smart homes, automatically orchestrating lights, climate, and other devices based on your presence, gestures, and context without sending data to the cloud.

Hyeonjong Ryu: Founder & CEO

A Vinyl Bar in Shibuya

A Vinyl Bar in Shibuya is a Music Software Label, founded by Spotify’s former Head of Innovation and a group of award-winning creative technologists from TikTok and Zynga. They’re empowering the next generation of music creators and consumers by building interactive, playful, AI-powered products that feel more like instruments than production tools. That means no text-to-music. No DAWs. And no cap.

Máuhan Zonoozy: Founder

Deveillance

Deveillance is building for a world where microphones are everywhere and recording is the default. Their first product delivers portable audio privacy—forming a 1.5-meter protection zone that disrupts nearby recording devices while keeping voices clear for the people in the room.

Aida Baradari: Founder & CEO

Era Labs

Era is building the agentic OS for the next generation of AI devices. Through Era Core, a model-and hardware-agnostic orchestration layer, Era enables brands and creators to build their own opinionated, personality-driven AI hardware—without relying on closed ecosystems like iOS or Android. Era believes AI devices will evolve like jewelry, not smartphones: diverse, expressive, and identity-driven. By providing modular software and simple hardware building blocks, Era makes it possible for anyone to create crafted AI devices—a world powered by Era.

Liz Dorman: Founder and CEO

Alex Ollman: Founder & CTO

Casa

Casa is a new way to design and browse spaces. The team is working in stealth.

Suraya Shivji: Founder & CEO

Krzysztof Zabłocki: Founder & CTO

Isometry

Isometry is the intelligence layer for on-call teams that automatically surfaces the right context from wherever it lives the moment an alert fires. For engineers: faster resolution. For business and customer-facing teams: instant clarity on what's broken, who's impacted, and what to tell customers. One context layer for every stakeholder.

Shubhang Kandiraju: Founder

Interested in joining a future cohort? Apply here.

We are proud to support these founders and residents—past and present—as they gather in downtown Manhattan to build the next era-defining consumer AI products.

Want to meet them in person? Join us for our next happy hour on Thursday, January 29th at 4.30pm. RSVP here →