This Sesame company profile covers the company's valuation, revenue, funding rounds, investors and history. Sesame works in artificial intelligence, with a focus on conversational voice AI and wearables. It was founded in 2023 and is headquartered in San Francisco, California, United States. Every figure links to a public source, and anything the company hasn't disclosed is marked as such.
Revenue
| Metric | Value | As of | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Total funding | About US$307.6 million after the Series B (Crunchbase data, as reported) | October 2025 | SiliconANGLE |
Funding history
| Date | Round | Amount | Valuation | Investors | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oct 2025 | Series B | US$250M | Not disclosed | Sequoia Capital and Spark Capital (leads) | Road to VR |
Sesame timeline
Key dates from the sources on this page, oldest first. Metric snapshots are listed after the funding events.
- 2023 — Sesame is founded in San Francisco by Brendan Iribe (CEO) and Ankit Kumar.
- Oct 2025 — Series B: US$250M. Investors: Sequoia Capital and Spark Capital (leads).
- October 2025 — Total funding: About US$307.6 million after the Series B (Crunchbase data, as reported).
Investors
Overview
Sesame is building a personal AI companion that people talk to by voice, along with lightweight smart glasses designed to carry that companion through the day. The company drew wide attention in early 2025 when it released a research demo of two voices, Maya and Miles, that many listeners found strikingly natural: they paused, laughed, changed tone and responded to interruptions in a way that felt closer to a real conversation than typical voice assistants. Sesame calls this goal "voice presence", meaning a voice that feels understood and engaged rather than mechanical.
Brendan Iribe, the CEO, co-founded Sesame with Ankit Kumar. Iribe was a co-founder and the first CEO of Oculus, the virtual reality company that Facebook (now Meta) acquired in 2014, and he later led Meta's VR hardware work before leaving. Kumar was previously chief technology officer of Ubiquity6, an augmented reality startup. Several other former Oculus and Meta engineers joined the company, giving it deep experience in consumer hardware, displays, audio and real-time software.
Products
- Conversational voice model: Sesame's Conversational Speech Model generates speech that adapts to the context of a conversation, including emotion, rhythm and timing.
- Maya and Miles: two companion voices offered in its demo and beta app, used for open-ended conversation, advice, brainstorming and companionship.
- Mobile app: a beta iOS app launched alongside the Series B that lets users talk with the companion, with features such as memory of past conversations and web search.
- Smart glasses: lightweight eyewear in development, designed to let users talk with the companion hands-free and to give it awareness of what the wearer sees and hears. A release date hasn't been announced.
- Open research: Sesame released a smaller version of its speech model as open source, allowing developers to experiment with its approach.
Funding
Sesame raised an early round led by Andreessen Horowitz before announcing a US$250 million Series B in October 2025, co-led by Sequoia Capital and Spark Capital. According to Crunchbase data cited by SiliconANGLE, total funding reached about US$307.6 million. The company didn't disclose a valuation, and we haven't found a reliable source for one, so we show the valuation as not disclosed rather than repeat estimates. The funding is intended to grow the research team, expand the app and bring the glasses to market.
Business model
Sesame hasn't published pricing for a full commercial product. Likely sources of revenue include subscriptions for the AI companion, sales of the glasses, and possibly licensing its voice technology to other companies. Building both software and hardware is expensive, which helps explain the size of the Series B. Consumer hardware also requires manufacturing partners, retail distribution and customer support, all areas where the founders' Oculus experience is relevant.
Competition
Sesame competes with voice features from OpenAI's ChatGPT, Google's Gemini Live and Amazon's Alexa+, all of which have improved rapidly. In smart glasses, Meta's Ray-Ban and Oakley glasses with Meta AI are the market leaders, and Google, Apple, Samsung and others are investing in similar devices. AI voice companies such as ElevenLabs provide realistic voices to developers, while companion apps such as Character.ai and Replika target emotional conversation. Sesame's bet is that the most natural voice combined with purpose-built hardware can stand out against much larger rivals.
Sesame at a glance
Sesame is a San Francisco AI company co-founded by Oculus co-founder Brendan Iribe and Ankit Kumar. It builds conversational voice AI, known for its Maya and Miles voices, and is developing smart glasses. It raised a US$250 million Series B in October 2025 co-led by Sequoia Capital and Spark Capital, bringing total funding to about US$307.6 million, with no valuation disclosed.
Timeline
- 2023: founded by Brendan Iribe and Ankit Kumar.
- February 2025: releases its voice demo featuring Maya and Miles, which spreads widely online.
- March 2025: releases a smaller version of its speech model as open source.
- October 2025: raises a US$250 million Series B and opens its beta app.
Why voice is a hard AI problem
Text chatbots can take a moment to respond without feeling awkward, but people expect spoken conversation to flow. A good voice assistant must respond in a fraction of a second, know when the user has finished speaking, handle interruptions, and match its tone to the mood of the conversation. Traditional systems convert speech to text, generate a text reply and convert it back to speech, which loses emotional cues and adds delay. Newer models like Sesame's process conversation context more directly to produce expressive speech. Getting all of these details right is what makes the difference between a voice that sounds robotic and one people want to keep talking to.
Why glasses
Iribe and his team have argued that the best way to carry an AI companion everywhere is a device that's always with you, doesn't need to be taken out of a pocket and can see and hear the world from your perspective. Glasses fit that description: they sit near the ears and eyes, can hold microphones, speakers and cameras, and are socially familiar. Meta's success with camera glasses has shown there's consumer demand. The challenge is fitting enough battery, compute and audio quality into frames that people will want to wear all day.
Who uses Sesame
Sesame's beta users are early adopters interested in AI companions, people who prefer talking to typing, language learners and those curious about the latest voice technology. Developers and researchers use its open model to experiment with expressive speech.
Valuation context
Because Sesame hasn't disclosed a valuation, we don't include it in our valuation-ranked tables. A US$250 million Series B is very large for a company without a commercial product, which suggests investors valued it highly, but we don't publish unconfirmed figures.
Risks
- Hardware execution: consumer devices are hard to design, manufacture and sell profitably.
- Big tech competition: Meta, Google, Apple and OpenAI are all pursuing voice AI and wearables.
- Privacy: always-available microphones and cameras raise concerns for wearers and people around them.
- Companion AI concerns: emotional AI companions face scrutiny over dependence and safety, particularly for young users.
Questions for users
- What does the companion remember, and can you review or delete it?
- Where is audio processed and stored?
- How will pricing work once the beta ends?
Latest developments (October 2026)
Sesame released a new preview of its voice assistant on iOS and Android in October 2026, giving agents their own computers and connections to Google apps, according to TestingCatalog. It said its AI glasses, handmade in Japan, are now planned for 2027 rather than 2026. Its October 2025 Series B of US$250 million, led by Sequoia and Spark, remains its latest round, according to Sacra. See our AI voice companies guide.
What to watch
Watch the glasses launch date and price, the app's progress out of beta, any disclosed valuation, and how Sesame's voice quality compares with OpenAI and Google. Our guide to the most valuable AI startups covers related companies.
Takeaways
Consumers can try some of the most natural-sounding AI voices available. Founders can see how a compelling demo can attract major funding before a full product launch. Investors should watch whether Sesame can turn its voice lead into a hardware business against big tech competitors.
Sources
Every figure on this page comes from the public sources below. Where sources disagreed, we used the company's own announcement or a primary news report. Private-company data changes; check the date beside each figure.
Frequently asked questions
What does Sesame do?
Sesame is a artificial intelligence / conversational voice ai and wearables company headquartered in San Francisco, California, United States. It was founded in 2023.
What is Sesame's valuation?
Sesame has not publicly disclosed a valuation in the sources we track.
How much revenue does Sesame make?
Sesame is a private company and has not publicly disclosed its revenue. Figures on third-party sites are usually modelled estimates rather than numbers reported by the company.
What was Sesame's latest funding round?
The most recent financing we have verified is a series b in Oct 2025: US$250M. Source: Road to VR.
Who are Sesame's investors?
Investors named in public announcements include Sequoia Capital, Spark Capital and Andreessen Horowitz.
Who founded Sesame?
Sesame was founded in 2023 by Brendan Iribe (CEO) and Ankit Kumar.
Is Sesame a public company?
No. Sesame is a private company (private, venture backed), so its shares are not traded on a stock exchange and it isn't required to publish its financial results.
Where is Sesame headquartered?
Sesame is headquartered in San Francisco, California, United States.