Sesame, the conversational AI startup from Oculus founders, raises $250M and launches beta
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 company announced Tuesday.
The startup, led by former co-founder and CEO of Oculus Brendan Iribe And Ankit Kumarformer CTO of AR startup Ubiquity6, is working on creating a personal AI agent that communicates with users using a natural-sounding human voice. The company plans to embed the personal AI agent into lightweight glasses designed to be worn all day and allow users to interact via voice.
Start-up first emerged from stealth in February, with two demos of its technology: AI voices called “Maya” and “Miles.” The voices were quickly used by more than a million people within the first few weeks, generating more than 5 million minutes of conversations, according to a new study. after from Sesame investor Sequoia about his participation in the startup’s Series B.
“[T]The experience was unlike anything we had used before. Sesame’s conversation layer felt different,” the post said. “It not only translates the LLM output into audio, it directly generates speech and captures the rhythm, emotion, and expressiveness of real dialogue.”
Early reviews of the tech demo seem to agree, according to a report The edge described Sesame as “really fun” and “natural sounding.”
Sesame says the upcoming glasses will offer “high-quality audio” and access to an AI companion that will “observe the world next to you.”
Sequoia also noted that the smart glasses Sesame is building will be fashionable, so they look like something you’d want to wear even if they don’t offer built-in AI technology. A time frame for its availability is not yet shared – as Sequoia noted, “hardware takes time.”
On that front, Sesame may have an advantage. The founding team also includes the co-founder of Oculus Nate Mitchell as Chief Product Officer, former COO of Oculus and Fitbit director Hans Hartmann as COO, former Oculus engineering manager and technical director of Reality Labs Ryan Brownand longtime Facebook and Meta exec Angela Gayles.
In addition to sharing the news about the Series B, Iribe announced on 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 have the ability to “search, text and think,” he says.
Beta testers are asked to maintain their testing experiences confidential for now, meaning no features or results will be discussed outside of the official beta testing forums.
Investors in the Sesame Series B include Sequoia, Spark and other undisclosed backers, according to to Iribe.
