Brilliant Labs
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| Brilliant Labs | |
|---|---|
| |
| Information | |
| Industry | Augmented Reality, Smart glasses |
| Founded | 2019 |
| Founder | Bobak Tavangar, Raj Nakarja, Ben Heald |
| Headquarters | Singapore |
| Notable Personnel | Bobak Tavangar (co-founder and CEO), Raj Nakarja (head engineer), Ben Heald (head designer) |
| Products | Monocle, Frame, Halo |
| Website | https://brilliant.xyz |
Brilliant Labs is a Singapore-based consumer electronics company that designs lightweight, open-source Augmented Reality and AI-powered Smart glasses. It was founded in 2019 by Bobak Tavangar, a former program lead at Apple, with co-founders Raj Nakarja and Ben Heald, and it publishes the hardware design files and software for its eyewear so developers can build their own applications.[1][2][3] Its products are the Brilliant Monocle clip-on lens (2023), the Brilliant Labs Frame glasses (2024) and the Brilliant Labs Halo glasses, announced on 31 July 2025.[1][2][4] As of October 2026, Halo is the only product shown on the company's website, and its product page lists it at US$399 with a statement that shipments began in early August 2026.[5][6] The company was started in Hong Kong and later moved its headquarters to Singapore.[7][8]
Rather than building bulky Mixed Reality visors, Brilliant Labs makes products that look close to ordinary eyeglasses and lean on a connected phone and cloud services for their AI features. Across its lineup the company has positioned itself as an open, developer-friendly alternative to closed platforms from larger firms.[1][9] Its glasses run an AI assistant called Noa, and in 2026 the company announced partnerships with Alif Semiconductor, Neuphonic and TheStage AI aimed at moving more of that AI processing onto the glasses and the paired phone.[10][11]
History
Founding and Monocle (2019-2023)
Brilliant Labs was founded in 2019. The South China Morning Post reported that Tavangar, Raj Nakarja and Benjamin Heald started the company in Hong Kong to launch a single-lens device, and that it later moved its headquarters to Singapore, where its manufacturing was concentrated, while still sourcing some components from China.[7] The company's seed funding announcement in June 2023 named Tavangar as founder and chief executive and Nakarja and Ben Heald as co-founders, and TechCrunch reported that month that the company was run solely by its three co-founders.[3][1] Forbes reported in January 2024 that Tavangar, who holds a master's degree in management from the University of Cambridge, had worked on two earlier computer vision startups and then as a program lead for Apple in Shanghai focused on its supply chain. The same article described Nakarja as head engineer, based in Stockholm, and Heald as head designer, based in Shanghai, and said Tavangar moved the company to Singapore in 2023. It also reported a manufacturing partnership with Moveon Technologies, an optical components maker in Singapore.[12]
Its first widely covered product, the Brilliant Monocle, reached the market in early 2023 as a small clip-on AR lens aimed at developers and hardware tinkerers.[1] Road to VR and the company's funding announcement both said Monocle began shipping in February 2023.[13][3] Tavangar told the South China Morning Post that Monocle orders reached the thousands, well above the few hundred the company had expected.[7] Forbes reported in January 2024 that Monocle had sold more than 3,000 units since its February 2023 launch and listed its price at US$299 at that time.[12]
In June 2023 the company disclosed a 3 million US dollar seed round backed by Brendan Iribe (co-founder of Oculus), Adam Cheyer (co-founder of Siri), Eric Migicovsky (founder of Pebble), and Plug and Play Ventures.[1] Alongside the round it announced arGPT, its first ChatGPT integration for Monocle.[13] By that point Brilliant Labs said it had built a community of close to 2,000 developers on its Discord server.[1]
Frame (2024)
In February 2024 the company announced its first full pair of glasses, the Brilliant Labs Frame, and revealed a further investment from John Hanke, the chief executive of Niantic (the studio behind Pokemon GO). TechCrunch reported the company's total financing at around 6 million US dollars at that time.[2] Pre-orders opened on 8 February 2024, with shipping planned for April.[2] In a May 2024 interview with Freethink, which described Frame as recently shipped, Tavangar said the company did not "want to see your life," and that the Frame camera was set up so the AI could pick out only the visual information it needed.[8] Tavangar compared Frame's positioning to the Rabbit R1 handheld rather than to other AR glasses in his interview with the South China Morning Post.[7]
Halo (2025-2026)
In 2025 Brilliant Labs introduced a second-generation product, Halo, expanding from a developer-focused lens to an all-day wearable with a color display.[9] Engadget reported the announcement on 31 July 2025, with pre-orders opening that day at US$299 and shipping planned for late November 2025.[4] The launch slipped into 2026. Tech.eu reported a price of US$349 and availability in the first quarter of 2026 in March 2026, and EE Journal listed the US price as US$349 in May 2026.[11][14] In that May 2026 interview, Tavangar said Halo was being mass-produced by Foxconn.[14]
As of October 2026 the Halo product page lists a regular price of US$399 and states that "the first Halo units are rolling off the production line now, with shipments beginning in early August."[5] Brilliant Labs opened a public GitHub repository for the Halo firmware on 19 August 2026 and has published frequent firmware releases since, with version 0.8.19 released on 7 October 2026.[15] The company's developer documentation listed the Noa app as "coming soon" on the Apple App Store and Google Play in October 2026.[16]
Technology
Brilliant Labs centers its products on an open-source software stack and an AI assistant called Noa. Noa is a multimodal agent that can take input from the glasses' camera and microphone, answer questions, search the web, and translate speech.[8][9] On the Frame, Noa stitched together several third-party models: OpenAI's GPT-4 for text generation, OpenAI's Whisper for speech recognition, Stability AI's Stable Diffusion for image generation, and Perplexity for conversational web search.[2][8]
The company's software is released under a permissive open-source license, with the code hosted on GitHub.[8] Its developer documentation covers all three products, with SDKs for Python, Flutter, Web Bluetooth and Lua for Halo, Python, Flutter and Lua for Frame, and a MicroPython API for Monocle.[17] Its later Halo glasses run a Lua scripting environment built on top of the Zephyr open-source operating system, and pair with a cross-platform mobile companion app. The company's GitHub organization also hosts the source of its Noa app for iOS and Android.[9][18][19] The company has emphasized privacy, stating that its glasses do not record or store a user's life and that sensor data on Halo is converted into an irreversible mathematical representation rather than kept as raw footage.[8][18]
In a May 2026 interview, Tavangar told EE Journal that earlier prototypes built around processors and FPGAs made design cycles slow, which he described as feeling "like running through peanut butter," and that Halo stores embeddings rather than raw audio or video.[14]
Products
Brilliant Labs' catalog has moved from a single clip-on AR module toward complete, all-day Smart glasses. All three were released with published design files and open-source software, and as of October 2026 only Halo is offered on the company's website.[6]
| Product | Year | Type | Price (USD) | Notable specs and notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brilliant Monocle | 2023 | Clip-on AR lens | 349 | Pocket-sized open-source AR module weighing about 15 grams; built around five processors including a hackable FPGA accelerator; camera, microphone, and capacitive touch; clips to eyewear or held to the eye[1] |
| Brilliant Labs Frame | 2024 | AI smart glasses | 349 | Announced February 8, 2024; about 39 grams; 640 x 400 micro OLED display; 720p low-power camera; Windsor-style frame; Noa assistant; prescription lens options; preorders opened the same day with April shipping[2][8] |
| Brilliant Labs Halo | 2025 (announced) | AI smart glasses | 299 at pre-order launch (July 2025); 399 listed price (October 2026) | Announced July 31, 2025; just over 40 grams; 0.2-inch color Micro-OLED heads-up display; Alif Semiconductor B1 chip with on-device NPU; up to 14-hour battery (manufacturer claim); bone-conduction speakers; IMU with tap detection; Bluetooth 5.3; shipping slipped from late 2025 to 2026[9][18][4][5] |
Brilliant Monocle
The Brilliant Monocle was the company's debut device, launched in early 2023 at 349 US dollars. It is a small, open-source AR lens that can be clipped onto a pair of glasses or held up to the eye, packing a camera, microphone, capacitive touch sensor, and a display into roughly 15 grams. It included a field-programmable gate array intended to let developers experiment with custom on-device processing.[1] Early demonstrations included rizzGPT, a project by Stanford students that turned Monocle into a GPT-4 display suggesting conversation responses in real time, which went viral in March 2023.[1]
Brilliant Labs Frame
The Brilliant Labs Frame, announced on February 8, 2024, was the company's first complete pair of glasses. Weighing about 39 grams, it used a 640 x 400 micro OLED display and a 720p low-power camera, and was styled after classic Windsor-style eyeglasses.[2][8] Frame shipped with the Noa assistant, which combined GPT-4, Whisper, Stable Diffusion, and Perplexity to handle visual questions, translation, image generation, and web search.[2][8] It launched at 349 US dollars with prescription lens options and began shipping in 2024.[2][8] Freethink reported that Frame holds dual 105 mAh batteries in its rounded temple tips.[8]
Halo
Halo, announced on 31 July 2025, is designed as an all-day wearable. Pre-orders opened at 299 US dollars, and the listed price was 399 US dollars as of October 2026.[4][5] It added a 0.2-inch full-color Micro-OLED heads-up display, two bone-conduction speakers, a microphone array, an IMU with tap detection, and a low-power optical sensor used only for AI inference.[9][18] It is powered by an Alif Semiconductor B1 chip with a dedicated neural processing unit for on-device AI, rated for up to 14 hours of battery life, and connects over Bluetooth 5.3.[9] Halo introduced new Noa features including a "Narrative" agentic memory system that builds a personalized knowledge base over time, and an experimental "Vibe Mode" that lets users create small apps with spoken natural-language commands.[18] The company announced Halo with global shipping planned for late November 2025; shipping was later pushed into 2026, and the product page now states that shipments began in early August 2026.[9][18][5] Prescription lenses for Halo are sold through SmartBuyGlasses, which Engadget reported covers more than 100 countries.[4]
Partnerships
| Date | Partner | Announced scope |
|---|---|---|
| 3 March 2026 | Neuphonic and TheStage AI | On-device and on-phone AI for Halo: Neuphonic supplies low-latency text-to-speech that runs locally, and TheStage AI's inference engine optimizes the models (including transcription, wake word and diarization) for the paired phone, with the companies stating that no raw point-of-view data leaves the user's phone or glasses[11] |
| 11 March 2026 | Alif Semiconductor | Joint definition of the silicon for Brilliant Labs' next generation of AI glasses; the release said Halo would be powered by Alif's Balletto B1 microcontroller, which the Halo firmware repository also names[10][15] |
In the Alif announcement, Tavangar said the partnership would let the company "deliver experiences that feel more natural, more private, and more responsive."[10]
Funding and ownership
Brilliant Labs is a privately held startup. It raised a 3 million US dollar seed round announced in June 2023, led by Brendan Iribe, Adam Cheyer, Eric Migicovsky and Plug and Play Ventures.[1][13] Other named backers in that round were Steve Sarowitz, Nirav Patel (founder of Framework and a former member of the Oculus core team), Francisco Tolmasky (a member of the original iPhone team) and Moveon Technologies.[13][3] The company said the funding would go toward expanding the team, research and development, and operations.[3] In February 2024 it added an investment from Niantic chief executive John Hanke, with reported total financing of around 6 million US dollars; the company did not disclose the size of Hanke's investment.[2]
The company's leadership is headed by co-founder and chief executive Bobak Tavangar, with co-founders Raj Nakarja as head engineer and Ben Heald as head designer according to Forbes.[8][10][12] Forbes also listed Steve Sarowitz and Coho Deeptech among the company's investors in January 2024.[12] EE Journal reported in May 2026 that Brilliant Labs had five core team members and a community of more than 13,000 developers, engineers, makers and enthusiasts, mostly on GitHub and Discord.[14]
See also
References
- ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 Rita Liao (2023-06-27). "Brilliant Labs puts AI in front of your eye with its tiny open source AR lens". TechCrunch. https://techcrunch.com/2023/06/27/brilliant-labs-puts-ai-in-front-of-your-eye-with-its-tiny-open-source-ar-lens/. Retrieved 2026-10-14.
- ↑ 2.00 2.01 2.02 2.03 2.04 2.05 2.06 2.07 2.08 2.09 Rita Liao (2024-02-08). "AR glasses with multimodal AI nets funding from Pokemon GO creator". TechCrunch. https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/08/ar-glasses-with-multimodal-ai-attracts-funding-from-pokemon-go-founder/. Retrieved 2026-10-14.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 "Brendan Iribe, Co-Founder of Oculus, Adam Cheyer, Co-Founder of Siri, Eric Migicovsky, Founder of Pebble, ... (Brilliant Labs press release via PR Newswire)". TNGlobal. 2023-06-27. https://technode.global/?p=49013. Retrieved 2026-10-14.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 Daniel Cooper (2025-07-31). "Brilliant Labs launches its second-generation smart glasses". Engadget. https://www.engadget.com/wearables/brilliant-labs-launches-its-second-generation-smart-glasses-130000032.html. Retrieved 2026-10-14.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 "Halo". Brilliant Labs. https://brilliant.xyz/products/halo. Retrieved 2026-10-14.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 "Brilliant Labs". Brilliant Labs. https://brilliant.xyz/. Retrieved 2026-10-14.
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 "Generative AI could be smart glasses' killer app and Hong Kong-founded Brilliant Labs is betting big on the trend". South China Morning Post. Yahoo Finance. 2024-02-11. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/generative-ai-could-smart-glasses-093000138.html. Retrieved 2026-10-14.
- ↑ 8.00 8.01 8.02 8.03 8.04 8.05 8.06 8.07 8.08 8.09 8.10 8.11 Kevin Dickinson (2024-05-08). "How Brilliant Labs CEO is creating a 'symbiosis of humanity and artificial intelligence'". Freethink. https://www.freethink.com/robots-ai/frame-ai. Retrieved 2026-10-14.
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4 9.5 9.6 9.7 Scott Hayden (2025-08-01). "Brilliant Labs Unveils All-day Smart Glasses with Color Display, Pre-orders Launch at $300". Road to VR. https://roadtovr.com/brilliant-labs-halo-smart-glasses-price-release-date/. Retrieved 2026-10-14.
- ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 10.3 "Brilliant Labs and Alif Semiconductor Partner on Development of New Technologies for Next-Generation AI-Powered Smart Glasses". VentureBeat. Business Wire. 2026-03-11. https://venturebeat.com/business/brilliant-labs-and-alif-semiconductor-partner-on-development-of-new-technologies-for-next-generation-ai-powered-smart-glasses. Retrieved 2026-10-14.
- ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 Cate Lawrence (2026-03-03). "Brilliant Labs, Neuphonic and TheStage AI partner to bring privacy-first, cloud-free AI to smart glasses". Tech.eu. https://tech.eu/2026/03/03/brilliant-labs-neuphonic-and-thestage-ai-partner-to-bring-privacy-first-cloud-free-ai-to-smart-glasses/. Retrieved 2026-10-14.
- ↑ 12.0 12.1 12.2 12.3 Zinnia Lee (2024-01-15). "Meet the tiny startup aiming to take on Apple and Meta with AI smart glasses". Forbes Australia. https://www.forbes.com.au/news/innovation/how-brilliant-labs-is-taking-on-apple-and-meta/. Retrieved 2026-10-14.
- ↑ 13.0 13.1 13.2 13.3 Scott Hayden (2023-06-29). "AR Startup Brilliant Labs Secures $3M Seed Funding from Oculus & Siri Co-founders". Road to VR. https://roadtovr.com/brilliant-labs-ar-funding-oculus-siri/. Retrieved 2026-10-14.
- ↑ 14.0 14.1 14.2 14.3 Max Maxfield (2026-05-14). "AI+AR Glasses That Remember Where You Left Your Keys". EE Journal. https://www.eejournal.com/article/aiar-glasses-that-remember-where-you-left-your-keys/. Retrieved 2026-10-14.
- ↑ 15.0 15.1 "Releases - brilliantlabsAR/halo-firmware". GitHub. Brilliant Labs. https://github.com/brilliantlabsAR/halo-firmware/releases. Retrieved 2026-10-14.
- ↑ "Halo". Brilliant Documentation. Brilliant Labs. https://docs.brilliant.xyz/halo/halo/. Retrieved 2026-10-14.
- ↑ "Brilliant Documentation". Brilliant Labs. https://docs.brilliant.xyz/. Retrieved 2026-10-14.
- ↑ 18.0 18.1 18.2 18.3 18.4 18.5 Skarredghost (2025-07-31). "Brilliant Labs launches Halo: AI smartglasses that last all day". The Ghost Howls. https://skarredghost.com/2025/07/31/brilliant-labs-halo/. Retrieved 2026-10-14.
- ↑ "Brilliant Labs (brilliantlabsAR)". GitHub. https://github.com/brilliantlabsAR. Retrieved 2026-10-14.