Every so often, a new interface emerges that redefines how we interact with computers. The keyboard. The mouse. The touchscreen. Today, we believe we’re at the start of the next great shift—where voice becomes a primary interface to AI.

Sesame is a company bringing computers to life—not just as tools, but as thought partners. They are building a voice-first AI that you actually want to spend time with, who’s always right there with you.

Building Your Personal Agent

This is not another productivity assistant. It’s something different: a lifelike, expressive collaborator—designed to engage and evolve with its user over time.

Co-founders Brendan Iribe, the former CEO and co-founder of Oculus, and Ankit Kumar, the former CTO of Ubiquity6 are focused on creating a social, emotionally intelligent experience, grounded in conversation and personality. The team’s approach is also rooted in something fundamental—our biology. Humans evolved for voice. It’s our most natural and nuanced communication interface. By leaning into that, Sesame opens up a new design space—one that more closely resembles the free flowing interactive mode of verbal communication. 

Voice is particularly challenging because small changes in tonality, accent, and breathing impact our perception of the person that we’re speaking with. These distinctions may appear to us subconsciously, but we are consciously aware that “this voice sounds human” or “this sounds like a robot.” Roelof saw this first-hand during the rise of YouTube: When faced with tradeoffs between audio and video quality, the company prioritized the former. The YouTube team discovered that while consumers can live with grainy videos, they have absolutely no tolerance for choppy audio. 

The Sesame team, with their obsessive attention to detail, has combined technical excellence with craftsmanship in their pursuit of the perfect AI conversational partner. This shows up everywhere, from the system’s vocal cadence and memory model, to the team’s investment in expressiveness and character. Models are already very intelligent and will only get more intelligent over time. The big unlock for future usefulness is therefore most likely to come from new, more natural ways of interacting with them.

From Research Preview to Real Connection

In February, Sesame shared an early demo, showcasing the team’s voice model through two characters: Maya and Miles.

The response was remarkable. In the first few weeks, more than one million people were drawn to engage with it, generating more than five million minutes of conversation.

Many members of the Sequoia team were among them. We spent hours talking to Maya and Miles, and the experience was unlike anything we’d used before. Sesame’s conversational layer felt different. It doesn’t just translate LLM output into audio—it generates speech directly, capturing the rhythm, emotion, and expressiveness of real dialogue. The voices felt alive—engaging, witty, even surprising. It was fun. Maya and Miles both have character and personality.

We kept coming back, not because we needed to—but because we wanted to. That’s what ultimately led us to partner, co-leading Sesame’s Series B.

Voice in the Real World

Sesame’s vision is to build an ambient interface that is always available and has contextual awareness of the world around you.  To achieve that, Sesame is creating their own lightweight, fashion-forward AI-enabled glasses designed to be worn all day. They’re intentionally crafted—fit for everyday life.

Fashion will matter here. Glasses like this can’t just be functional—you need to look great in them. Sesame has a unique taste, sense of style, subtlety and cultural awareness. These are glasses you’d wear even without the technology. 

Hardware takes time, but it is fundamental to delivering AI that’s integrated into everyday moments. The Sesame team has deep experience leading full-stack product efforts from prototype to global distribution. This experience will be critical to meeting the ambitious goals they have set in front of them—and ultimately to getting a fantastic product into consumers hands soon.

Building the Interface of the Future

We all have a sense that AI will reshape society. But for that to happen at scale, the interface needs to feel effortless and human—not mechanical. That’s where Sesame is focused. Not just on intelligence, but on how intelligence is delivered—in a way that feels engaging, personal and enduring. We believe that craftsmanship and taste will set Sesame apart from the competition.

The breadth and urgency of the problem they’re solving has attracted a high-caliber and growing team, including Oculus co-founder Nate Mitchell as chief product officer.  We believe, with voice, Sesame will unlock much of AI’s latent power. Models will continue to improve, but what matters to users is the surface: the quality of the experience, the trust in the system and the feeling that it understands them. 

We’re honored to support Brendan, Ankit, Ryan, Nate, Hans, Angela and the rest of the Sesame team as they take on one of the most important problems in AI: how we connect with computers, and how we feel when we do.

To experience Sesame for yourself, sign up to participate in the closed beta for their upcoming iOS app at sesame.com/beta.