Sesame, an artificial intelligence startup and maker of conversational smart glasses, has raised a $250 million Series B round and is opening its beta to a select group of testers, the company announced Tuesday.
The startup, led by the former co-founder and CEO of Oculus Brendan Irrib and Ankit Kumarformer CTO of AR startup Ubiquity6, is working to create a personal AI agent that interacts with users using a natural-sounding human voice. The company plans to integrate the personal AI agent into lightweight glasses designed to be worn all day and that users can interact with via voice.
First the boot arose from stealth in February, offering two demos of its technology — AI voices named “Maya” and “Miles.” The voices were soon accessed by more than a million people within the first few weeks, generating more than five million minutes of conversation, according to a new position from investor Sesame Sequoia about its participation in the startup’s Series B.
“[T]Its experience was unlike anything we had used before. Sesame’s conversational layer felt different,” the post reads. “It doesn’t just translate LLM output into audio—it directly produces speech, capturing the rhythm, emotion, and expressiveness of real dialogue.”
Early reviews of the tech demo seem to agree, according to one The Verge described Sesame as “really fun” and “natural sounding”.
Sesame says its upcoming glasses will offer “high-quality sound” and access to an AI companion that will “observe the world right next to you.”
Sequoia also noted that the smart glasses Sesame makes will be fashionable, so they look like something you’d choose to wear even if they don’t offer built-in AI technology. The timeline for their availability has not yet been shared. 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 Hans Hartmann as COO, as well as former Oculus Engineering Director and Reality Labs Engineering Director Ryan Brown, and longtime Facebook and Meta enforcer Angela Gales.
In addition to sharing Series B news, Iribe was announced at X that Sesame is now opening an early beta of the Sesame iOS app. The app experience will allow testers to get hands-on with the AI technology being built, as the app will be able to “search, message and think,” he says.
Beta testers are asked to maintain their testing experiences confidential for now, which includes not discussing features or results beyond the official beta testing forums.
Sesame Series B investors include Sequoia, Spark and other undisclosed backers, according to in Iribe.
