We briefly mentioned New Wave Hardware in last week’s Inanimate Lab Notes so this is me doing some unpacking. While you’re there, join 300+ other subscribers and sign up for our newsletter. You’ll get weekly links and updates on what we’re working on.
There are a bunch of things changing with new hardware products, design and technology.
Let’s say: the intersection of hardware and AI. But our hunch is that it’s broader than that.
There are new ways to get hardware into the hands of consumers, and new AI interactions that are now possible, and more, and these changes are happening independently but simultaneously. We’re tracking this as what we’re calling New Wave Hardware.
So we got a few founders together at Betaworks in NYC earlier this week for a roundtable to compare notes (thank you Betaworks!).
The meta question was: does our hunch hold? And, if so, what characterises New Wave Hardware and what specifically is changing – so that we can push at it?
I kept notes.
I’ll go off those and add my own thoughts.
(I’m using some direct quotes but I won’t attributing or list attendees. I would love for others to share their own perspectives!)
AI interfaces
Voice is good now! (As I said.) So we’re seeing that a lot.
More than that:
- You can express an intent and the computer will do what you mean
- Natural interfaces are workable now, beyond voice. e.g. the new Starboy gadget by lilguy:
We trained multiple tiny image models that run locally on the device, letting it recognize human faces and hand gestures
(launch thread on X).
What do we do with consumer gadgets that perceive pointing and glances? What is unlocked when we shift away from buttons and apps to interact with hardware devices, and the new interface is direct and human and in the real world?
New interaction modalities
Beyond the user interface, the way we interact with hardware is changing. I kept a running list of the interaction modality changes that were mentioned:
- Human interfaces – see above.
- Situated – due to always-on sensors, AI devices know what’s going on around them and can respond when they see fit, not only on a user trigger. Yes, screens that dim when it gets dark, but in a wider sense this goes back to Clay Shirky’s essay Situated Software (2004),
software designed in and for a particular social situation or context.
We’re seeing more of this.
- Autonomous – agents are software that has its own heartbeat, now we see that
the hardware becomes aware
… and then what? Maybe the user doesn’t need to be intentional about activating some function or another; the device can get ahead of intentions, and offer a radically different kind of value to the user. A new design possibility.
- Networked – we’re frequently working with connected devices which today have attained a new level of reliability. What happens when the stuff around us channels planetary intelligence?
- Embodied – the cleverness of the Plaud AI note taker device is that it’s a social actor: you can notice it, place it on the table, cover it; it inflects what people say and how they feel (for better or worse). Hardware is in the real world and you can move it from focal to peripheral attention just by moving your head.
Some of these are new colours in the palette to design with; some are intrinsic to hardware and have been there all along. Though amplified! The rise of wearables (described by one founder as sitting between the utility and affinity group
) means that hardware is more frequently in our faces.
There are challenges. When we have devices and the ability to put software that can do anything at any time in them,
the lack of affordances and constraints can be baffling. So how do we not do that?
And how do we understand what things do anyway, really, when behaviour steered by AI is so non-deterministic? Perhaps we have to lean into the mystical. That’s another trend.
Getting hardware in the hands of users
Every few years there’s a claim that it’s now quicker than 18 months to get a hardware product from concept through manufacture: that’s still not the case but there are alternatives and short cuts – some of which are potentially rapidly quicker.
Like: reference designs. There is now so much hardware coming out of Shenzhen, there are high level references designs for everything to customise, and factories are keen to partner. One team at the roundtable brought up their core electronics in the US, then got pretty sophisticated products built (batch size of 100) complete with beautiful metal enclosures after spending just 3 weeks in China.
Also like: 3D printers. Short run fabrication is possible domestically in a way it wasn’t before. Let me highlight Cipherling which combines production-grade microcontrollers with a charming 3D printed enclosure to get to market quicker.
It does seem like the sophistication of the Western and Shenzhen hardware ecosystems has made these approaches - which are not new - newly accessible.
Form factors
New Wave Hardware skews consumer, perhaps?
Or at least there’s a renewed interest in consumer hardware from startups and investors.
This is partly because there’s a big unknown and therefore a big opportunity: AI is hungry for context, it’s useful in the real world outside our phones, and the new AI interaction modalities means there’s a lot to figure out about how to make that good – it’s not obvious what to do. Like do we have lanyards or pucks on tables or what? We need to experiment, which demands quick cycle time, which is a driver on finding alternatives to the 18 month product development cycle.
Also the previous generation of hardware was oh-so-asinine. One remark I wrote down from the roundtable, regarding the consumer hardware that currently surrounds us: This is hardware that would want to be invisible if it could.
So there’s a desire to try new forms; products that don’t secretly want to hide themselves.
Just a note too that “new form factors” doesn’t just mean standalone devices: we continue to be inspired by the desk-scale or even room-scale work at Folk Computer.
New tools, of course
If you’re an artist wanting to put a few dozen instances of weird new consumer electronics in people’s hands, and your single blocker was writing firmware, then guess what: in the year of our Claude 2026 that is no longer a blocker.
AI tools provide what I’ve previously called Universal Basic Agency and it is wonderful. When individuals are unblocked, we get an abundance of creativity in the world.
(We were at a 6 minute demos event in the basement of an independent bookstore in Brooklyn on Friday - see this week’s Lab Notes - and one speaker was showing their vintage arcade display adaptor project. So cool. They make super complicated PCBs but don’t enjoy 3D modelling, so did the CAD in programmable modelling software with a few lines of code. Not AI, but advanced tools.)
And do we see a glimmer of end-user programming too?
I’m grateful for the thoughtful and open conversation of everyone at the roundtable.
As I write this, a set of colourful Oda speakers, hanging from the ceiling here at Betaworks, relay a live audio stream from a macaw sanctuary forest in central Costa Rica. We can hear the birds and the weather – it is transporting.
If there is such a trend as New Wave Hardware (and, after our small conversation, I do believe there is) then it is not confined to mass market novel AI interfaces, it is also these profound artistic interventions, and we all learn from one another.
Are you seeing something happen here too? Are hardware startups characterised by something different today versus, say, 5 years ago? Lmk if you end up sharing your perspective on your blog/newsletter – would love to read.
At Inanimate we are building products within New Wave Hardware, and working to do our bit to enable it.
We hope to convene another roundtable in the near future, either here in NYC or back home in London, to continue swapping notes and pointers and feeling this out together.
We briefly mentioned New Wave Hardware in last week’s Inanimate Lab Notes so this is me doing some unpacking. While you’re there, join 300+ other subscribers and sign up for our newsletter. You’ll get weekly links and updates on what we’re working on.
There are a bunch of things changing with new hardware products, design and technology.
Let’s say: the intersection of hardware and AI. But our hunch is that it’s broader than that.
There are new ways to get hardware into the hands of consumers, and new AI interactions that are now possible, and more, and these changes are happening independently but simultaneously. We’re tracking this as what we’re calling New Wave Hardware.
So we got a few founders together at Betaworks in NYC earlier this week for a roundtable to compare notes (thank you Betaworks!).
The meta question was: does our hunch hold? And, if so, what characterises New Wave Hardware and what specifically is changing – so that we can push at it?
I kept notes.
I’ll go off those and add my own thoughts.
(I’m using some direct quotes but I won’t attributing or list attendees. I would love for others to share their own perspectives!)
AI interfaces
Voice is good now! (As I said.) So we’re seeing that a lot.
More than that:
What do we do with consumer gadgets that perceive pointing and glances? What is unlocked when we shift away from buttons and apps to interact with hardware devices, and the new interface is direct and human and in the real world?
New interaction modalities
Beyond the user interface, the way we interact with hardware is changing. I kept a running list of the interaction modality changes that were mentioned:
Some of these are new colours in the palette to design with; some are intrinsic to hardware and have been there all along. Though amplified! The rise of wearables (described by one founder as ) means that hardware is more frequently in our faces.
There are challenges. When we have devices and the lack of affordances and constraints can be baffling. So how do we not do that?
And how do we understand what things do anyway, really, when behaviour steered by AI is so non-deterministic? Perhaps we have to lean into the mystical. That’s another trend.
Getting hardware in the hands of users
Every few years there’s a claim that it’s now quicker than 18 months to get a hardware product from concept through manufacture: that’s still not the case but there are alternatives and short cuts – some of which are potentially rapidly quicker.
Like: reference designs. There is now so much hardware coming out of Shenzhen, there are high level references designs for everything to customise, and factories are keen to partner. One team at the roundtable brought up their core electronics in the US, then got pretty sophisticated products built (batch size of 100) complete with beautiful metal enclosures after spending just 3 weeks in China.
Also like: 3D printers. Short run fabrication is possible domestically in a way it wasn’t before. Let me highlight Cipherling which combines production-grade microcontrollers with a charming 3D printed enclosure to get to market quicker.
It does seem like the sophistication of the Western and Shenzhen hardware ecosystems has made these approaches - which are not new - newly accessible.
Form factors
New Wave Hardware skews consumer, perhaps?
Or at least there’s a renewed interest in consumer hardware from startups and investors.
This is partly because there’s a big unknown and therefore a big opportunity: AI is hungry for context, it’s useful in the real world outside our phones, and the new AI interaction modalities means there’s a lot to figure out about how to make that good – it’s not obvious what to do. Like do we have lanyards or pucks on tables or what? We need to experiment, which demands quick cycle time, which is a driver on finding alternatives to the 18 month product development cycle.
Also the previous generation of hardware was oh-so-asinine. One remark I wrote down from the roundtable, regarding the consumer hardware that currently surrounds us:
So there’s a desire to try new forms; products that don’t secretly want to hide themselves.
Just a note too that “new form factors” doesn’t just mean standalone devices: we continue to be inspired by the desk-scale or even room-scale work at Folk Computer.
New tools, of course
If you’re an artist wanting to put a few dozen instances of weird new consumer electronics in people’s hands, and your single blocker was writing firmware, then guess what: in the year of our Claude 2026 that is no longer a blocker.
AI tools provide what I’ve previously called Universal Basic Agency and it is wonderful. When individuals are unblocked, we get an abundance of creativity in the world.
(We were at a 6 minute demos event in the basement of an independent bookstore in Brooklyn on Friday - see this week’s Lab Notes - and one speaker was showing their vintage arcade display adaptor project. So cool. They make super complicated PCBs but don’t enjoy 3D modelling, so did the CAD in programmable modelling software with a few lines of code. Not AI, but advanced tools.)
And do we see a glimmer of end-user programming too?
I’m grateful for the thoughtful and open conversation of everyone at the roundtable.
As I write this, a set of colourful Oda speakers, hanging from the ceiling here at Betaworks, relay a live audio stream from a macaw sanctuary forest in central Costa Rica. We can hear the birds and the weather – it is transporting.
If there is such a trend as New Wave Hardware (and, after our small conversation, I do believe there is) then it is not confined to mass market novel AI interfaces, it is also these profound artistic interventions, and we all learn from one another.
Are you seeing something happen here too? Are hardware startups characterised by something different today versus, say, 5 years ago? Lmk if you end up sharing your perspective on your blog/newsletter – would love to read.
At Inanimate we are building products within New Wave Hardware, and working to do our bit to enable it.
We hope to convene another roundtable in the near future, either here in NYC or back home in London, to continue swapping notes and pointers and feeling this out together.