Oculus co-founder Nate Mitchell joins smart glasses startup Sesame

Former Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe is getting the band back together: Iribe’s new startup Sesame just hired Oculus co-founder Nate Mitchell as its new Chief Product Officer. The Sesame team, which already includes a few other Oculus / Meta alumni, is “building the future together again,” Mitchell wrote on LinkedIn.

Sesame hasn’t been shy about its vision for that future: The company launched a demo of a personal AI assistant earlier this year, and is also building smart glasses to run that assistant on. (A prototype of those glasses, as shown on the Sesame website, can be seen above.)

The company will be entering a market that is getting crowded quickly: There’s of course Meta with its Ray-Bans, plus some new Oakley-branded smart glasses the company announced just last week.

And this week, news broke that Google is deepening its partnership with South Korean eyewear brand Gentle Monster: Google is finalizing a $100 million investment in Gentle Monster, according to The Korea Economic Daily.

The investment would give Google a 4% stake in the eyewear maker. Google first announced that it was partnering with Gentle Monster to make Android XR-powered smart glasses at its Google I/O developer conference last month. (A Google spokesperson declined to comment.)

Separately, Google is also teaming up with Warby Parker to build Android XR glasses. The company showed off monocular AR glasses at the conference, but is also working on Android XR to Ray-Ban-style smart glasses without a display; first devices aren’t expected to reach shelves before next year.

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Photo courtesy of Sesame.