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Sesame, a conversational AI startup and maker of 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.
Startup led by former Oculus co-founder and CEO Brendan Iribe And Ankit KumarFormer CTO’s AR startup Ubiquity6is working to create a personal AI agent that communicates with users using a natural-sounding human voice. The company plans to embed personal AI agents into lightweight glasses that are designed to be worn all day and that users can interact with via voice.
First the startup emerged from theft In February, when it offered two demos of its technology — AI voices named “Maya” and “Miles”. Voices was soon accessed by more than a million people in the first few weeks, generating more than 5 million minutes of conversation, according to a new post By Sequoia Investor Sequoia about the startup’s Series B participation.
“…the experience was something different we’d used before. Sesame conversation level felt different,” the post said. “It doesn’t just translate LLM output to audio—it produces speech directly, capturing the rhythm, emotion, and expression of real dialogue.”
Early reviews of the tech demo seem to agree, as does one report The Verge Described Teal as “really funny” and “natural-sounding”.
Teal says its upcoming glasses will offer “high-quality audio” and access to an AI companion that will “monitor the world alongside you.”
Sequoia also noted that the smartglasses that Sesame is developing will be fashion, so they look like something you’d love to wear even if they don’t offer built-in AI technology. A timeframe for their availability is not yet shared; As Sequoia points out, “hardware takes time.”
On that front, sesame may have an advantage. Its founding team also includes Oculus co-founders Nate Mitchell As its chief product officer, former Oculus COO and Fitbit exec Hans Hartmann as COO, as well as former Oculus engineer manager and Reality Labs director of engineering Ryan Brown, and longtime Facebook and Meta exec Angela Gales.
In addition to sharing news of its Series B, Eribe announcement Sesame on X 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 developed, as the app will have the ability to “search, read and think”.
Beta testers are asked to keep their testing experience confidential For now, that includes not discussing features or results outside of the official beta testing forums.
Sesame Series B investors include Sequoia, Spark and other undisclosed names, According to to Irib
