Sesame AI Inc., a company building lifelike artificial intelligence voice companions and lightweight wearable devices that enable natural, continuous conversation with an ever-present digital assistant, said Tuesday it has raised $250 million in new funding to advance its voice-AI technology and accelerate development of its companion wearable devices.

Founded in 2023 by Oculus co-founder Brendan Iribe and technologist Ankit Kumar, Sesame is attempting to redefine how people interact with computers. The company is focused on creating voice-driven, lifelike companions that don’t just execute commands but actually converse, listen and engage with users in a more human way.

Sesame is developing a personal agent, an AI companion designed to be “an ever-present brilliant friend and conversationalist, keeping you informed and organized, helping you be a better version of yourself.” The company’s vision is for an assistant that can engage in meaningful dialogue, remember context, adapt to your preferences and feel more naturally interactive, as opposed to typical voice assistants that reply with short answers.

As part of its vision, Sesame is also working on lightweight eyewear hardware, devices you wear all day that give you high-quality audio and let the companion “observe the world alongside you.” While some reports called these smart glasses, the glasses won’t have augmented reality or virtual reality, versus supporting voice interactions.

To deliver on its promise, Sesame has created a “Conversational Speech Model” that processes audio and text simultaneously, enabling response times of just 200 to 300 milliseconds and allowing the companion to pick up emotional cues, tone and more human-like interruptions or pauses. The methodology differs from the classical voice assistant pipeline — speech-to-text to language model to text-to-speech — by integrating both semantic and acoustic features into one conversational process.

Though not yet ready to launch a product to the public, the company has research demos that include voice personas. They can engage in extended conversations, react emotionally and participate in narrative or gameplay-style interactions, for example, playing a role-playing adventure.

According to TechCrunch, the company is getting closer to launching something, though, as it has opened up beta testing to a selected group of testers.

The Series B round was led by Sequoia Capital Operations and Spark Capital Management, with other undisclosed backers also participating.

Photo: Sesame