Partnering with Sesame: A New Era for Voice

• Voice is the next primary human-computer interface after touchscreen.
• Sesame builds emotionally intelligent, lifelike voice AI — not productivity tools.
  • Characters Maya and Miles: 1M+ engagements, 5M+ conversation minutes early on.
  • Speech captures rhythm, emotion, expressiveness — not text-to-speech.
• Founders: Brendan Iribe (Oculus CEO) and Ankit Kumar (ex-Ubiquity6 CTO).
  • Nate Mitchell (Oculus co-founder) as CPO.
• Moat is craftsmanship: vocal cadence, memory models, character expressiveness.
• Hardware play: AI glasses built for all-day wear, fashion-forward ambient interface.
  • Contextual awareness as the differentiator over pure software voice assistants.
• Sequoia co-led Series B — Botha + Cahn backing the bet on voice-first AI.

Roelof Botha and David Cahn (Sequoia Capital) · 2025-10-21 · Read on sequoiacap.com