Oculus Founders’ AI Startup Sesame Unveils New iPhone App for Natural Conversations

AI startup Sesame, founded by several former Oculus executives and engineers, has officially launched a public preview of its conversational AI technology through a new iOS application. The company has spent more than a year developing AI agents that aim to move beyond the traditional chatbot experience popularised by platforms like ChatGPT, focusing instead on creating more natural, human conversations.

According to Sesame, one of the biggest challenges in conversational AI is balancing speed and accuracy. Quick responses help conversations feel fluid, but thoughtful and accurate answers often require additional processing time. The company believes this trade-off can make AI interactions feel unnatural when responses either arrive too slowly or sacrifice quality for speed.

To address this issue, Sesame says it has built advanced search and retrieval systems that allow its AI agents to access current information quickly. The platform can also perform multiple searches simultaneously while the AI is already speaking, allowing it to incorporate newly discovered information into responses in real time. As a result, conversations can evolve naturally, with the AI adjusting or expanding its answers mid-sentence, much like a person recalling additional information during a discussion.

The app launches with four distinct AI personalities named Maya, Miles, Simone, and Charlie. Each agent comes with its own voice, perspective, personality traits, and memory capabilities. Maya and Miles were previously available through Sesame’s research preview program, which attracted more than one million users within weeks of launch, according to investor Sequoia. At the time, Sesame had recently secured a $250 million Series B funding round and expanded access to its technology through a beta program.

Throughout the beta period, the company gathered user feedback and introduced several new features. These include visual search cards that display image-based results for explaining concepts, note-taking tools for capturing important information, a texting mode for situations where voice interaction is impractical, and deep-dive capabilities that provide more detailed responses to complex questions.

Sesame has also introduced an incognito mode aimed at users seeking greater privacy. In this mode, AI agents can still reference the context of an ongoing conversation while avoiding the need to store any information in long-term memory.

While the iPhone application marks an important milestone, Sesame views it as only the beginning of a much broader AI strategy. The company has previously revealed plans to develop AI-powered smart glasses, which it expects to introduce in 2027. Before then, Sesame intends to expand the capabilities of its conversational agents beyond discussion and information retrieval.

The company suggests that future versions of its AI agents will be able to perform tasks and take actions on behalf of users, moving beyond the traditional chatbot model. This shift could make AI assistants more useful in everyday life by allowing users to interact naturally through conversation rather than crafting highly specific prompts or commands.

Such conversational agents could help users complete tasks more intuitively, reducing the need to understand exactly how a request should be phrased or executed. Instead, users would explain what they need, and the AI would determine the appropriate steps.

The Sesame app is available starting today in 39 countries. For now, the full experience is being offered free of charge, although some users may encounter a short waitlist during registration. The company also confirmed that an Android version is currently in development and will be released at a later date.