Sesame, a conversational AI startup and smart glasses maker, has raised a $250 million Series B round and is opening its beta to a select group of testers, the corporate announced Tuesday.
The startup is led by the previous co-founder and CEO of Oculus Brendan Iribe And Ankit Kumarformer CTO of AR startup Ubiquity6, is working on developing a private AI agent that interacts with users via a natural-sounding human voice. The company plans to embed the private AI agent into lightweight glasses that may be worn throughout the day and that users can interact with via voice.
The startup first emerged from stealth in February and offered two demos of its technology — AI voices named “Maya” and “Miles.” According to a brand new report, the votes were soon accessed by greater than 1,000,000 people throughout the first few weeks, leading to greater than five million minutes of conversation post from Sesame investor Sequoia about its participation within the startup's Series B.
“The experience was unlike anything we had used before. Sesame's conversational level felt different,” the post said. “It doesn’t just translate LLM output into audio – it directly generates speech, capturing the rhythm, emotion and expressiveness of real dialogue.”
Early reviews of the tech demo appear to agree, in keeping with a report from The edge described Sesame as “really fun” and “natural sounding”.
Sesame says its upcoming glasses will offer “high-quality audio” and access to an AI companion that “watches the world alongside you.”
Sequoia also noted that the smartglasses developed by Sesame shall be fashionable, making them seem like something you’ll wear even in the event that they didn't offer built-in AI technology. A time-frame for his or her availability just isn’t yet announced; As Sequoia noted, “Hardware takes time.”
In this regard, sesame can have a bonus. The founding team also includes the co-founder of Oculus Nate Mitchell as Chief Product Officer, former Oculus COO and Fitbit manager Hans Hartmann as COO and former Oculus Engineer Manager and Reality Labs Engineering Director Ryan Brown, and long-time Facebook and Meta manager Angela Gayles.
Iribe doesn't just share the news of his Serie B announced on X that Sesame is now opening an early beta of the Sesame iOS app. The app experience will allow testers to stand up close and private with the AI technology being developed, because the app could have the flexibility to “search, write and think,” he says.
Beta testers are asked to maintain track of their testing experiences confidential For now, which means features or results won’t be discussed outside of the official beta testing forums.
Sesame Series B investors include Sequoia, Spark and other undisclosed backers. after to Iribe.
