Taya, a San Francisco, CA-based developer of jewellery-first AI hardware, has raised $5 million in a seed funding round led by MaC Venture Capital and Female Founders Fund.
The round also saw participation from a16z speedrun.
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The company will use the funds to speed up product development, improving both hardware and software for everyday use, enhancing privacy, and long-term reliability.
Founded by Stanford-trained product designer and mechanical engineer Elena Wagenmans, formerly at Apple, Taya is an AI necklace designed for intentional, single-user voice capture—never recording the surrounding environment.
Unlike many AI devices that record continuously, Taya takes a different approach. It focuses on short, intentional voice captures, letting users preserve fleeting thoughts without turning daily life into constant surveillance.
Taya’s system is designed around directional microphones and voice-prioritisation signal processing to focus on the wearer rather than the surrounding environment.
Following 3 million organic views across platforms and a sold-out initial pre-order batch, Taya has spent the past several months in direct conversation with early customers to refine both hardware and software around daily usability, privacy, and long-term retention.
Rather than positioning itself as a meeting notetaker or always-on recorder, Taya is focused on brief, frequent voice captures throughout the day: moments of insight, reminders, and creative thoughts that would otherwise disappear.
“People want intelligence, but they don’t want to wear something that makes everyone around them uncomfortable,” said Elena Wagenmans, Founder & CEO of Taya. “We’re building jewellery-first AI for private reflection – something you choose to wear, and choose when to activate.”
“Privacy isn’t a feature, it’s an architectural decision,” Wagenmans added. “If this becomes part of your daily life, it has to align with how people actually want to live.”
About Taya
Founded by Elena Wagenmans in San Francisco, Taya is designing AI-powered jewellery that people actually want to wear every day—unlike most wearable tech that ends up in a drawer. Wagenmans, a Stanford-trained engineer and former Apple hardware designer, has created Taya to combine private, on-demand voice intelligence with jewellery-quality craftsmanship.
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