Astrohaus has a very specific niche angle. The Michigan-based startup makes hardware for writers looking to cut through the clutter. It's really hard to finish a novel while on Instagram.
While the company has made its name by pushing most technological trends, however, its latest offering has found a bandwagon to jump on. Announced at CES 2025Wordrunner embraces the mechanical keyboard boom while staying true to AstroHouse's mission statement of distraction-free writing.
The Freewrite Wordrunner is, in essence, a standard mechanical keyboard with some writer-focused tricks. Specifically, the peripheral has a wordometer (word count) and a “sprint timer” for writing.
The idea is to bake productivity tools directly into the product itself. AstroHouse is essentially offering a way to bypass writing apps and focus on writing.
“Writers use keyboards more than almost anyone else, yet there hasn't been a professional-grade tool made specifically for them,” says founder and CEO Adam Lieb. “While there's an entire industry of gamers creating special features for them, writers are forced to rely on general-purpose keyboards and add-on software to track their work. Wordrunner transforms this relationship by making the keyboard itself an active participant in the writing process — not just a passive input device, but a true writing companion.”
The keyboard is aluminum, with floating keys and a red control knob. The system is launching on Kickstarter in February, with a planned late-2025 shipping