Era

Designing intelligence for the things you choose.

Era is building a software layer that lets hardware makers add AI agents and orchestrations to their devices, handling tasks like customized voice creation or adding intelligence to classic form factors such as headphones. The platform is aimed at device manufacturers, brands, designers, and independent creators who want their objects to think and respond in a distinct style, without having to stitch together their own model stack. Currently, the company provides over 130 LLMs from more than 14 providers to enable different AI gadget form factors such as glasses, jewelry, and home speakers. Era was founded last year by CEO Liz Dorman, CTO Alex Ollman, and CPO Megan Gole. Dorman worked at Humane on AI orchestration and transitioned to HP as part of the company's acquisition, Ollman worked at HP on agentic frameworks for enterprises, and Gole came from Sutter Hill Ventures where she was on the Jony Ive and Sam Altman io project before joining Era. The team is pitching the platform as an alternative to the app model, with Dorman arguing that AI can replace the app layer so that intelligence, not a screen of icons, becomes how people interact with an object. The launch is paired with funding. The company has raised $11 million to date, including a $9 million seed round led by Abstract Ventures and BoxGroup with participation from Collaborative Fund and Mozilla Ventures, following an earlier $2 million pre-seed from Topology Ventures and Betaworks, alongside angels including Flickr co-founder Caterina Fake, iPhone keyboard creator Ken Kocienda, and Poetry Camera creator Kelin Zhang. The timing matters because AI hardware is in an awkward middle stage after Humane's sale to HP and Rabbit's quiet period, and Era is betting that the next wave of devices will come from many small makers rather than one flagship gadget company, which is exactly the audience a horizontal intelligence layer needs to serve.

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