Dialogic AI startup and smart glasses manufacturer Sesame announced this Tuesday that the company has successfully completed a $250 million Series B funding round and has opened an early Beta version of its iOS app to a select group of users.
This startup, led by Brendan Iribe, former co-founder and CEO of Oculus, and Ankit Kumar, former Chief Technology Officer of AR startup Ubiquity6, is working on developing a personal AI agent that can interact with users using natural human voice. The ultimate goal of Sesame is to embed this powerful personal AI agent into a lightweight, wearable smart glasses that can be used all day and interact through voice.
AI Voice Demonstrations Spark Market Interest, Sequoia Capital Supports
Sesame made its first public appearance in February, launching two technical demonstration voices named "Maya" and "Miles." According to a blog post from Sequoia Capital, one of Sesame's main investors, about a million people used these two voices in the first few weeks, generating over 5 million minutes of conversation.
Sequoia Capital highly praised Sesame's technology, stating, "This experience is different from anything we've used before. The conversational layer of Sesame feels very different." They noted that the technology "is not just converting LLM outputs into audio—it directly generates speech, capturing the rhythm, emotion, and expressiveness of real conversations."
Top Hardware Team Ensures Support, Creating Stylish AI Glasses
The founding team of Sesame is strong, bringing together several core executives from former Oculus and Meta, laying the foundation for the development of smart glasses hardware. The team includes: Nate Mitchell, co-founder of Oculus (Chief Product Officer), Hans Hartmann, former Chief Operating Officer of Oculus and executive at Fitbit (Chief Operating Officer), Ryan Brown, former manager of Oculus engineers and director of Engineering at Reality Labs, and Angela Gayles, who has long served as an executive at Facebook and Meta.
Sesame promises that its upcoming glasses will provide "high-quality audio" and include an AI companion that can "observe the world with you." Sequoia Capital particularly emphasized that the smart glasses Sesame is building will set fashion trends, and even without built-in AI technology, their appearance is attractive enough to make users wear them. However, Sequoia Capital also pointed out, "Hardware takes time," so the release date of the glasses has not been announced yet.
Beta Version App Opened, Major Investors Exposed
CEO Iribe of Sesame announced on X that the early Beta version of the iOS app is now open. Testers will be able to experience the AI technology being developed in advance, which features "search, text, and thinking" functions.
The investors of this Series B funding round include Sequoia Capital, one of the lead investors, Spark, and other undisclosed supporters. Sesame requires Beta testers to keep their testing experiences confidential temporarily to ensure effective information control.
