The 'together tech' movement is betting against AI isolation — and it might be onto something

Picture this: a group of adults hunched over a table, not staring at screens, but actually looking at each other. Playing a board game. Laughing at something that happened in the room, not on a feed. It sounds almost retro, right?

But here's the thing. Some of the most interesting founders I've been tracking aren't building the next AI assistant or autonomous system. They're building the opposite. They want you to put your phone down.

The anti-AI bet

According to TechCrunch, while AI fundraising keeps smashing records (we're talking billions flowing into foundation models and inference infrastructure), a counter-movement is quietly gaining traction. They're calling it "together tech," which, honestly, I initially thought sounded like marketing fluff. But after digging into what these companies are actually building, I'm less dismissive.

Brynn Putnam, who founded the fitness mirror company Mirror (sold to Lululemon for $500 million in 2020), just raised money for a new startup called Board. The focus? In-person games and social experiences. Not AR. Not AI companions. Just... people in rooms together.

And she's not alone. Cyberdeck creators are going viral on social media with these whimsical, handmade DIY computers that, and I love this, literally encourage users to go outside. Touch grass, as the kids say.

This isn't just backlash

You might be wondering: isn't this just the AI-free browser crowd repackaged? The people who want to go back to flip phones and think smartphones ruined everything?

I don't think so. And here's why.

The AI-free movement often feels reactionary. It's defined by what it's against. These together tech founders seem to be building toward something specific. They're not anti-technology, they're pro-presence. There's a difference, even if it's subtle.

Putnam's background is instructive here. She built Mirror, which was fundamentally a screen-based product. She's not a Luddite. She just seems to have concluded that the next valuable thing isn't more screen time, it's less. Or at least, different.

The timing matters too. We're deep into the AI hype cycle now. Every pitch deck mentions AI. Every product roadmap has an AI feature. The contrarian bet, the thing that actually stands out, is saying "what if we didn't do that?"

What I don't know yet

I should be honest: it's too early to say whether this is a real trend or a handful of interesting outliers. TechCrunch is framing it as potentially "the most intriguing startup bet of 2026," which, okay, that's a bold claim. The data I've seen is mostly anecdotal.

We don't have solid numbers on how much capital is actually flowing into together tech versus AI. My guess? It's a rounding error compared to the AI tsunami. But that might be the point. Sometimes the best opportunities are where nobody's looking.

The other thing I'm uncertain about is whether this translates beyond a certain demographic. Board games and in-person social experiences skew toward people with disposable income, time, and space to host gatherings. That's not everyone.

Why this matters for robotics

So why am I, someone who covers humanoids and embodied AI, writing about board game startups?

Because I think there's a tension building in how we think about robots in domestic and social spaces. The dominant narrative is that robots will do things for us: fold laundry, deliver packages, provide companionship. But if there's genuine demand for less mediated experience, for presence over convenience, that changes the calculus.

Maybe the winning consumer robot isn't the one that replaces human interaction. Maybe it's the one that facilitates it somehow. I'm not sure what that looks like yet. Tbh, I'm still working through this.

But the together tech wave suggests that "more AI everywhere" isn't the only future people want. And that's worth paying attention to.