Sesame, the conversational AI startup from Oculus founders, raises $250M and launches beta

Sesame, an innovative startup specializing in conversational AI and smart glasses, has successfully raised an impressive $250 million in a Series B funding round. As part of this announcement, the company has also initiated a beta testing phase, allowing a select group of users to experience its groundbreaking technology. Led by Brendan Iribe, a former co-founder and CEO of Oculus, along with Ankit Kumar, who previously served as CTO at AR company Ubiquity6, Sesame aims to develop a personal AI assistant that communicates with users through a remarkably human-like voice. The smart glasses, designed for all-day wear, will enable users to engage with their AI companion via voice commands. Emerging from stealth mode earlier this year, Sesame showcased its technology through demonstrations featuring two AI voices, dubbed “Maya” and “Miles.” Within weeks, these voices garnered attention from over a million users who collectively logged more than five million minutes of conversation, as highlighted by Sequoia, an investor in Sesame. Sequoia praised the unique conversational experience provided by Sesame, stating, “It doesn’t just translate LLM output into audio—it generates speech directly, capturing the rhythm, emotion, and expressiveness of real dialogue.” Early feedback from tech reviews, including The Verge, has been overwhelmingly positive, calling Sesame's technology “genuinely fun” and “natural-sounding.” The forthcoming smart glasses promise to deliver high-quality audio while providing users with an AI companion that will “observe the world alongside you.” Additionally, Sequoia emphasized that the design of Sesame's smart glasses would be stylish enough to be worn even without the integrated AI features, though a release date has yet to be announced. The founding team boasts impressive credentials, including Nate Mitchell, another Oculus co-founder, as Chief Product Officer, and Hans Hartmann, a former Oculus COO, as COO. The team also includes Ryan Brown, a former engineering director at Reality Labs, and Angela Gayles, a long-time executive at Facebook and Meta. In conjunction with the funding news, Iribe shared on X that Sesame is launching an early beta version of its iOS app, designed to give testers a firsthand look at the capabilities of the AI technology. The app will allow users to “search, text, and think,” according to Iribe. Beta testers are currently being asked to keep their insights confidential and limit discussions to official beta test forums, while the Series B funding round saw participation from notable investors like Sequoia and Spark, among others.