Sesame

About Sesame

Financials

Dated, source-cited figures. Estimates are marked.

Products by Sesame

All products by Sesame reviewed by our AI panel of experts.

SesameAI Agents & Assistants

Personal voice AI agents for the in-between moments of your day

Free4.6/10

How Our Review Panel Scores Sesame

Six independent reviewer personalities assessed Sesame's product on their own terms. They disagreed by 3.0 points — The Finance Lead was the hardest to convince, The Power User the most positive.

Averaged across 1 reviewed product in our catalog. Scores are out of 10.

Competitive Landscape

Who Sesame competes with, and how they differ.

OpenAI7.9/10

ChatGPT's Advanced Voice Mode is one feature inside a general-purpose assistant with hundreds of millions of users, while Sesame is a voice-only startup betting its entire product — and eventual smart-glasses hardware — on conversational voice.

2 products reviewed on TopReviewed

ElevenLabs8.3/10

ElevenLabs sells voice cloning and text-to-speech APIs across many languages for developers and enterprises, while Sesame builds its own persistent voice companions (Maya, Miles) rather than a general-purpose voice-generation platform.

1 product reviewed on TopReviewed

Hume AI7.9/10

Hume AI licenses emotion-aware voice models and its Empathic Voice Interface for other companies to embed, whereas Sesame ships its own consumer-facing companion app and is building AI glasses around its in-house Conversational Speech Model.

1 product reviewed on TopReviewed

Cartesia7.9/10

Cartesia sells low-latency, real-time voice-generation infrastructure (its Sonic models) for developers building voice agents, while Sesame targets consumers directly with its own Maya/Miles app rather than licensing a voice API.

1 product reviewed on TopReviewed

Character.AI6.8/10

Character.AI's roleplay companion chatbots are primarily text-based with add-on voice, monetized through a c.ai+ subscription, while Sesame is voice-first from the ground up and free during its current beta.

1 product reviewed on TopReviewed

Replika5.9/10

Replika is a longer-running text-and-avatar AI companion app on a freemium/subscription model, while Sesame's Maya and Miles are newer voice-first companions built on Sesame's own CSM model and backed by $300M+ in venture funding.

1 product reviewed on TopReviewed

Company Timeline

Key milestones in Sesame's history, with sources.

1. May 28, 2026Launch

   iOS App Public Launch — Four AI Voice Agents

   Sesame publicly released its iOS app in 39 countries, featuring four voice agents (Maya, Miles, Simone and Charlie) with search, notes and texting modes; the company said intelligent eyewear is planned for 2027.

   techcrunch.com
2. Oct 21, 2025Funding

   Series B — $250M led by Sequoia Capital and Spark Capital

   Sesame raised $250 million in a Series B round co-led by Sequoia Capital and Spark Capital, with additional undisclosed backers, to fund development of AI-powered smart glasses and opened an iOS beta.

   techcrunch.com
3. Jun 27, 2025Milestone

   Oculus Co-Founder Nate Mitchell Joins as Chief Product Officer

   Nate Mitchell, an Oculus co-founder, announced he was joining Sesame as Chief Product Officer, reuniting with fellow Oculus alumni Brendan Iribe (CEO) and Ryan Brown at the smart-glasses startup.

   roadtovr.com
4. Mar 13, 2025Launch

   Open-Sources CSM-1B Base Voice Model

   Sesame released CSM-1B, the base version of its Conversational Speech Model, as an open-source model, following the viral reception of its Maya and Miles voice demo.

   techcrunch.com
5. Feb 27, 2025Launch

   Exits Stealth With Maya and Miles Voice Demo

   Sesame exited stealth and published research on its Conversational Speech Model (CSM), letting users talk in real time with two AI voice companions, Maya and Miles, in a demo that went viral for lifelike speech.

   sesame.com
6. November 2023Funding

   Series A — $47.5M led by Andreessen Horowitz

   Sesame closed a $47.5 million Series A round led by Andreessen Horowitz in November 2023, bringing total funding to roughly $57.6 million to date, according to Crunchbase data.

   roadtovr.com
7. 2023Founded

   Sesame Founded by Oculus Alumni

   Sesame was founded in 2023 by Oculus co-founder and former CEO Brendan Iribe, former Oculus hardware architect Ryan Brown, and former Ubiquity6 CTO Ankit Kumar.

   techbuzz.ai