Brilliant Labs

even notebook doodles render clean on the Halo display ❤️

🫨The noise is deafening: “AI will change the world!” … “AI will be the end of us!” But there’s an elephant in the room: this is actually a story of us👀 I think a lot about what makes us human. It’s not how we look, what we do, or where we come from. 🤗It’s that deeper, transcendent element which connects all of us. And we recognize it when we feel it: inspiration, creativity, motivation, care… love❤️ It has always bonded loved ones, families, tribes, nations... and in this age of relentless change, I have a hope that it will one day unite all of humanity🌍 Why am I reflecting on this? Because amidst the noise about AI, it is our shared humanity which, right now, needs elevating. Together with technologies which center human agency — human nobility — we will truly transform this world. ⛓️💥Those products which hijack our attention, further isolate us from each other, or entirely outsource core cognitive abilities to their “smart” system will only leave us addicted and diminished. And we won’t realize until it’s too late. 🚀In this era of exponential intelligence, computing ought to elevate our best selves — our higher nature — and amplify that power in service of our collective thriving. This is existential for us at Brilliant Labs as we build open source, privacy-first computing with humanity firmly in the driver’s seat.

I had a fantastic opportunity to interview Bobak Tavangar, CEO of Brilliant Labs, at CIOE to discuss the philosophy and features of their new Halo #smartglasses. This conversation was very insightful, particularly regarding the product strategy and the opportunities it presents for the developer community. The Halo glasses are made for all-day wear at just over 40 grams. They have an RGB display in the frame, a camera, IMU, mics, and bone conduction speakers. ► Open-Source Focus: Halo is the only full-featured #opensource pair of glasses, covering the hardware design, firmware, and software. ► AI-First Hardware: The device's design prioritizes utility and AI processing over becoming a heavy camera or video consumption tool. ► Vibe Mode: Developers can use natural language commands and it composes the necessary code, making it accessible whether you are a new developer using simple triggers or a seasoned engineer building complex systems. ► Privacy by Design: We discussed the commitment to user data protection. Halo handles rich media (images and audio) on-device, immediately encoding and encrypting it rather than storing it in the cloud. Brilliant Labs Halo is entering production soon and it is currently available for pre-order at $299 on brilliant.xyz #AugmentedReality #AIGlasses #BrilliantLabs

🍎While at Apple I learned something timeless: in a new device category, shaping the entire stack — atoms, electrons, bytes, and photons — is the only way to enduringly innovate. Anything less is just another form of ecomm dropshipping — buying a finished system off-the-shelf and pumping ads + viral stunts to shift inventory (increasingly common among startups in SF👀). 🏴☠️At Brilliant Labs, we live in our supply chain. 🤖We agonize over component selection. Dig deep into our supply chain to custom design key components and wrangle with suppliers for excellent terms. 👓We agonize over industrial and mechanical design which shapes a device from the first principles of what it ought to be — not what is convenient to buy off-the-shelf. 👾We agonize over our software stack — designing an architecture which is open source, steerable, efficient, and — critically — wildly innovative both in what it produces and how it works. ✍️This process is as painful as it is creatively rewarding — over the course of developing a new device, we build and rebuild the ENTIRE stack multiple times. 🙏🏻Because we believe innovation is more than the object — it is the whole system, an articulation of a ‘way of building’: your purpose, culture and values, supply chain, business model, and yes, product. ❤️🚀It is full stack work and requires relentless systems thinking — it is struggle, it is emergent, and it is built off hard-won learning… not viral stunts.

🚀The more we do this, the more I appreciate: preparing a product for mass production is as much of a development process as the product itself. Brilliant Labs Halo incoming ✌️😇

👋🐢

Had a blast speaking at the AI conference in San Francisco last month. You could sense the excitement around the coming shift in computing.

💥Originality (still) matters. To ponder deeply, conjure an original idea, refine it together with a small team — and put in the ensuing work to carry that idea to fruition — is hard. And it is also one of the most beautifully human things one can do. As we see a torrent of derivative AI slop — art, music, film, product design, even ideas themselves — paired with unabashed factory copycat products, this theme is existentially urgent. 🥹When Benjamin and I started Brilliant Labs, it started with sketches on the back of a napkin and a different perspective: an open source clip-on Monocle (long live Monocle!) with a focus on bringing AI in alignment with your POV to usher in a new era of AI-native computing. This was 2019. “AI glasses” were not a thing. Meta was still Facebook. And ChatGPT was years away from existing. 🤫We were mocked for ‘missing the point’: ‘what does AI have to do with glasses?? Glasses are for watching movies or seeing a whale fly through the sky — not AI!’ Back then, AR companies and their suppliers were falling over themselves to copy Magic Leap or the Microsoft HoloLens without thinking deeper about the purpose of these devices in our lives. Times have changed. 🚀Fast forward to our launch of Halo: still the only thin, light open source AI glasses with all-day 14hr battery life, the full range of sensors (camera, COLOR display, mics, speakers, IMU…), and deeply personal AI memory. ✨In other words, glasses as they should be: open, richly capable, and intelligent without compromising beauty or privacy. 🤡Sadly, most other companies are either hawking a Meta Rayban’s copycat or… shipping a ~$1000 goggle for watching short form videos (hey mark). Times have changed. But the game has not. 🏴☠️And neither have we. 🤘🏼Over the coming months we’ll be making announcements which will continue to push the boundaries for this product category and advance the future of open, privacy-minded computing for the AI era. 👾It might even have a touch of play👀