Conversational AI startup and smart glasses maker Sesame has raised a $250 million Series B round and is opening beta to a select group of testers, the company announced Tuesday.
A startup headed by the former co-founder and CEO of Oculus Brendan Iribe AND Ankit Kumarformer CTO of AR startup Ubiquity6, is working on creating a personal AI agent that interacts with users using a natural-sounding human voice. The company plans to put a personal AI agent in lightweight glasses that can be worn all day and with which users can communicate by voice.
First, start emerged from hiding in February, offering two demos of its technology – AI voices called “Maya” and “Miles.” According to a new study, over a million people accessed the voices in the first few weeks and generated over 5 million minutes of conversation. post by investor Sesame Sequoia about participation in the startup's Series B.
“(T)he experience was unlike anything we had experienced before. The conversational layer of Sesame felt different,” the post read. “It not only translates the LLM output into sound – it directly generates speech, capturing the rhythm, emotion and expression of real dialogue.”
According to one report, early reviews of the tech demo seem to bear it out Edge described Sesame as “really funny” and “natural-sounding”.
Sesame says the upcoming glasses will offer “high-quality audio” and access to an AI companion that will “observe the world with you.”
Sequoia also noted that the smart glasses Sesame is making will follow fashion, so they look like something you'd want to wear even if they don't offer built-in AI technology. There's no time frame for their availability yet – as Sequoia noted, “hardware takes time.”
On this front, Sesame may have an advantage. Its founding team also includes the co-founder of Oculus Nate Mitchell as chief product officer, former Oculus COO and Fitbit executive Hans Hartmann as COO, former Oculus engineering manager and CTO of Reality Labs Ryan Brownand a long-time director of Facebook and Meta Angel Gayles.
In addition to sharing news about his B-series, Iribe announced on X that Sesame is now opening an early beta version of the Sesame iOS app. The app will give testers a hands-on experience of the AI technology being developed, as the app will have the ability to “search, type and think,” he says.
Beta testers are asked to retain their testing experiences confidential for now, which includes not discussing features or results outside of the official beta testing forums.
Investors in Sesame Series B include Sequoia, Spark and other undisclosed backers, According to to Iribe.
