Johnny Boufarhat, the founder of pandemic-era video conference startup Hopin, is working on a new AI device startup, taking on rivals like OpenAI’s Jony Ive.

The startup is called Sedona.ai, Forbes has learned from corporate filings, GitHub and social media posts, and sources familiar with the matter. Australia-born Boufarhat, who has relocated to California, has not announced the project but the new website was launched earlier this year.

Valued at just $40 million in early 2020, Hopin had a meteoric rise as event organizers looked for ways to host virtual conferences and summits amid global lockdowns limiting travel and meetings. The London-based startup would go on to raise over $1.1 billion in total, with its valuation hitting $8 billion in 2021, according to Pitchbook data. With the funds, Hopin made several acquisitions and hired over 1,000 employees.

It’s since crashed. Part of the company was sold to RingCentral for $15 million (with an additional $35 million if certain growth targets were met) in 2023. Boufarhat stepped down that August. By April 2024, Italian tech consolidator Bending Spoons had bought up the surviving assets for $120 million, according to a corporate filing from Hopin’s liquidator.

At the company’s peak, Boufarhat (a Forbes 30 under 30 Europe alum) sold over $195 million of his own shares to investors. Hopin’s rapid rise and fall became a shorthand for the tech investment frenzy of the early pandemic, but it wasn’t a full wipeout. Around $500 million in unused capital was returned to its growth investors, according to sources familiar with the matter. Some of its early backers and employees profited from stock and options thanks to the Bending Spoons and RingCentral deals, the sources said.

In May 2025, Boufarhat, 32, raised $5 million for a new startup registered as Kable LLC, according to Securities and Exchange Commission filings. Former Hopin staff’s Linkedin profiles state that they had worked with Boufarhat on a new creator streaming platform called Kable TV.

A website registered at Kable.tv now redirects to Sedona.ai. Similarly, a Github repository with a Kable.tv user name has now been titled Sedona, and links back to the new website. Former Hopin engineering manager Mathieu Cassagnes has added commits to that Github page. Cassagnes and Boufarhat’s LinkedIn profiles list them as working for an unnamed “stealth” startup.

Artificial intelligence chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude have been massive hits with businesses and consumers but it's taken longer for the underlying technology to filter through into consumer gadgets. A handful of companies have tried, with mixed results. San Francisco-based Plaud, which sells a line of AI note-taking devices, has carved out a profitable niche. But devices that act more like always-on AI companions from companies like Humane and Rabbit have flopped.

OpenAI itself has made a massive bet on the space by buying former Apple designer Jony Ive’s startup Io for $6.5 billion in May 2025. Details about the product Ive is building have been sparse but the Wall Street Journal reported last year it would be a palm-sized AI “companion” capable of tracking sound and vision. OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar said earlier this month that she had already tested the device, which would be unveiled later this year, according to Business Insider.

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