Sesame's iOS app brings natural conversational AI from Oculus founders

Sesame, the AI startup co-founded by Oculus founders and other former VR company alumni, launched its iOS app on Thursday, moving beyond static chatbots with a new approach to conversational AI. The app tackles the inherent tension between quick replies and thoughtful responses by building fast search and retrieval systems that allow the AI to run multiple parallel searches while speaking, weaving real-time results into its speech mid-sentence. This allows the agents to speak more naturally, pivoting as they incorporate new information — much like a human recalling an additional point during a conversation. The app features four distinct agents: Maya, Miles, Simone, and Charlie, each with unique voices, personalities, points of view, and memory. In its earlier research preview, Maya and Miles attracted over a million users within weeks, and the company subsequently secured a $250 million Series B from Sequoia and others.

Building on beta feedback, Sesame added features like search cards for visual concepts, notes for capturing takeaways, a texting mode for when speaking isn't feasible, and deep dives for more thorough results. An incognito mode allows private conversations that still use context but don't save to memory. The iOS app is free for now and available in 39 countries, though a short waitlist may apply. An Android preview is promised later. This app is just the first step toward Sesame's larger vision: intelligent eyewear expected in 2027, and agents that will eventually take actions on users' behalf — moving from chatbots to true conversational agents that can execute tasks without requiring perfectly crafted prompts.