smart-glasses
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Madhav Lavakare Spent Eight Years Putting Conversation Back in View
A school friend’s unanswered problem sent a 16-year-old to the family projector with a screwdriver. Eight years, two gap years and a patient procession of prototypes later, AirCaps finally shipped.
Maceo Kwik Walked Away From $400K ARR to Build the Computer He Actually Wanted
Datost found revenue fast. Its founder found something harder: a reason to stop. Now the engineer who once squeezed a startup into the hours after work is betting on camera-free AI glasses, factory emails at night and a quieter kind of computer.
Tyler Hernandez
Tyler Hernandez is the CEO and co-founder of Tynt Technologies, a Boulder, Colorado deep-tech company commercializing Reversible Metal Electrodeposition (RME) - a patented platform that lets glass and plastic surfaces tint from crystal clear to full blackout in seconds, without continuous power. A co-inventor of the technology, he earned a chemistry PhD at Stanford under Professor Mike McGehee and was named to Forbes' 30 Under 30 in 2023. Tynt began chasing energy-saving smart windows, then pivoted in 2024 to lenses for AI-powered eyewear, drawing interest from Google, Meta, Apple and Samsung. Hernandez took the CEO seat in 2026 and is raising to deliver an AI-eyewear-ready lens.
Cayden Pierce
Cayden Pierce is the CEO and co-founder of Mentra, a San Francisco startup building MentraOS - the open-source operating system for AI smart glasses. Described as 'the Android for smart glasses,' MentraOS lets developers write one app and deploy it across any pair of smart glasses. A self-described transhumanist hacker, Pierce built his first DIY smart glasses prototype in his dorm room, worked with smart glasses inventor Steve Mann at the University of Toronto, researched proactive AI wearable agents at MIT Media Lab under Pattie Maes, converted a 40-year-old RV into a mobile hacker lab, and dropped out of MIT in 2024 to launch Mentra. The company raised an $8 million seed round backed by the co-founders of Android, YouTube, and Pebble, plus Y Combinator, Amazon, and Toyota Ventures.
David Jiang
David Jiang (Gonglue Jiang) is the co-founder and CEO of VITURE, the XR glasses company that captured 52% of the U.S. smart glasses market in Q4 2024 and raised $100M in Series B funding in 2025. A Harvard-trained human-computer interaction designer who worked on Google Glass and led AR at Rokid, he founded VITURE in 2021 with a single conviction: that wearable screens would replace the smartphone as the primary entertainment and productivity interface. VITURE One raised $3.1M on Kickstarter in one month, surpassing Oculus's prior record, and VITURE Pro later outranked Meta Ray-Ban on Amazon.