Sesame, a conversational AI startup and smart glasses maker, announced Tuesday that it has raised $250 million in a Series B round and will open a beta version to a select group of testers.
The startup, led by former Oculus co-founder and CEO Brendan Iribe and Ankit Kumar, former CTO of AR startup Ubiquity6, is working to develop personal AI agents that interact with users using natural human voices. The company plans to embed a personal AI agent into lightweight glasses designed to be worn all day, and which users can control using voice.
The startup first emerged from stealth in February to offer two demos of its technology, an AI voice named “Maya” and “Miles.” According to a new post from Sesame investor Sequoia about the startup’s Series B participation, the audio quickly attracted more than 1 million people and generated more than 5 million minutes of conversation in its first few weeks.
“[T]His experience was completely different from anything we had ever experienced. “Sesame’s conversation layer felt different. Rather than just converting LLM output to speech, it directly generates speech and captures the rhythm, emotion, and expressiveness of real dialogue,” the post says.
A report from The Verge called Sesame “genuinely fun” and “natural-sounding,” and early reviews of the tech demo seem to agree.
Sesame says the upcoming glasses will offer “high-quality audio” and access to an AI companion that “observes the world alongside you.”
Sequoia also said that the smart glasses Sesame is developing are so fashion-forward that they look like something people would choose to wear even if they don’t have AI technology built into them. A timeframe for availability has not yet been shared. As Sequoia pointed out, “Hardware takes time.”
Sesame may have an advantage in that regard. The company’s founding team also includes Oculus co-founder Nate Mitchell as chief product officer, former Oculus COO and Fitbit executive Hans Hartmann as COO, former Oculus engineering manager and Reality Labs engineering director Ryan Braun, and longtime Facebook and Meta executive Angela Gales.
In addition to sharing the Series B news, Iribe announced on X that Sesame is now opening an early beta of the Sesame iOS app. He said the app will have “search, text, think” capabilities that will allow testers to get hands-on experience with the AI technology being built.
Beta testers are asked to keep their testing experience confidential for the time being. This includes not discussing features or results outside of the official beta testing forums.
Sesame Series B investors include Sequoia, Spark and other undisclosed backers, Iribe said.
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