The future of technology software is contingent upon the capabilities of the hardware that it powers. That’s why Jawbone, a company that makes pretty and pretty useful hardware like the Jawbone UP, the Jawbone ERA and the Jambox speaker is on my shortlist for startups that will be huge huge huge in 2012 — despite some notable bumps along the way.

What will definitely help Jawbone’s prospects? The fact that it just raised $40 million from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Deutsche Telekom, private investor Yuri Milner and J.P. Morgan Asset Management — bringing its total funding to a hefty $162 million.

In case you want to meet the man behind the machine, here’s an interview with UP founder Hosain Rahman from earlier this year, when things with the UP were still on the um, up and up (sorry guys, I’m in a rush).