Akshay Narisetti, a Chennai-trained computer science engineer, is the co-founder and CEO of Pocket, a wearable AI hardware device that has sold more than 130,000 units and just raised $11 million from Accel, Y Combinator and a clutch of tech operators.
Robotics at 12
Narisetti’s LinkedIn profile traces his interest in robotics back to age 12, when he built a water-monitoring tank. His early drone-building attempts failed — one blew up its own controller — before he got a drone airborne two months later.
He studied Computer Science at SRM Institute of Science and Technology, Chennai (2019–2023), leading student teams on autonomous surface vehicles and drones, and graduated with a 9.4 CGPA.
From Georgia Tech dropout to founder
In 2024, Narisetti began a master’s in Computer Science at Georgia Institute of Technology but dropped out to start his company, his profile states.
Before Pocket, he worked as an engineer at Capitsign, BharatX and Questbook, and was a founding member of Omi, an open-source AI wearable project. He then moved through The Residency, an AI hardware incubator, and On Deck’s Founder Fellow programme, before launching Open Vision Engineering — the company behind Pocket — with co-founder Gabriel Dymowski.
What Pocket does
Pocket is a credit-card-sized puck that clips onto a smartphone and records conversations, turning them into summaries, speaker-tagged notes, draft emails and action items, all at a button’s touch.
Since its late-2025 launch, the device has sold over 130,000 units and hit a $27 million annualized revenue run rate by March 2026, the company said.
The $11 million round
Pocket emerged from Y Combinator’s Winter 2026 batch. On June 29, 2026, it announced $11 million in funding from Accel, Y Combinator, and operators including Vercel’s Guillermo Rauch, ElevenLabs’ Mati Staniszewski, and Opendoor’s Kaz Nejatian.
The money will go toward hiring in hardware and software, exploring new device form factors, and expanding the product platform.
Narisetti has said most meeting notetakers were built for online calls, leaving a gap for real-life conversations among lawyers, doctors, salespeople and field workers who can’t easily pull out a phone.
Accel partner Cecilia Wang, who led the investment, has pointed to the long-term value of a single running record of a person’s conversations and ideas.
