Sesame, a startup specializing in AI and smart glasses founded by former Oculus executives, has successfully raised $250 million in Series B funding. This substantial investment is expected to propel the development of its voice-based AI technology.
Breaking News
According to a report by Tech Crunch, prominent investors in Sesame’s Series B round include Spark Capital and Sequoia Capital. With this latest funding, Sesame has now raised a total of $307.6 million, as per data from Crunchbase.
Sesame emerged from stealth mode earlier this year and was established by Oculus co-founder and former CEO Brendan Iribe, former Oculus hardware architect Ryan Brown, and Ankit Kumar, the former CTO of AR startup Ubiquity6. In a significant development, Nate Mitchell, another Oculus co-founder, joined Sesame as Chief Product Officer in June, expressing his intention to “help bring computers to life.”
Currently, Sesame is developing an AI assistant in conjunction with a pair of sleek smart glasses. The AI assistant is envisioned to be “the ultimate conversational partner,” as stated by Sequoia Capital in a recent update.
Sequoia elaborates, “Sesame’s objective is to create an ambient interface that is constantly available and possesses contextual awareness of its surroundings. To achieve this, Sesame is designing their own stylish, lightweight AI-enabled glasses for everyday wear, tailored for seamless integration into daily life.”
Interested users can now sign up for beta access to Sesame’s AI assistants, Miles and Maya, through an iOS app. Additionally, a public preview is available, showcasing a ‘call’ feature that enables users to interact with the AI chatbots.
Personal Perspective
Whether you embrace it or resist it, AI is poised to become an intrinsic component of future technologies, as contextually aware systems strive to bridge the gap between user input and intelligent responses. This becomes particularly crucial in scenarios where hardware lacks a display, necessitating primarily voice-based interactions.
Key areas to monitor include Sesame’s potential launch of smart glasses to promote its AI assistant, placing it in direct competition with industry giants like Meta, Google, Samsung, and possibly Apple. While this may present challenges for Sesame if it chooses to go solo, an acquisition by one of these tech titans could offer a strategic advantage in the evolving landscape of smart glasses.
Past ventures such as Humane’s AI Pin or AI Friend necklace, which faced public criticism for essentially replicating smartphone apps in hardware form, serve as cautionary tales. Without a glimpse of Sesame’s smart glasses hardware, it remains unclear what unique features the company intends to introduce beyond offering comfortable off-ear headphones for AI activities throughout the day—a scenario that could potentially limit its competitiveness against the innovative smart glasses offerings from competitors like Meta, Google, Samsung, and Apple.
Nevertheless, the collective expertise of Sesame’s team in XR technologies sets a promising foundation for the company as it navigates the race to establish the next major computing platform.
