Mentra is building AugmentOS, the open source Android for smart glasses. Smart glasses hardware is finally ready, and we're building the software ecosystem to unlock the next personal computer.

Our team (ex. MIT, Tsinghua, JITX (YCS18), University of Toronto) has been building smart glasses for over 6 years.

The hardware was never ready, but breakthroughs in micro-optoelectronics has give us lightweight, all-day wearable smart glasses and put us on the precipice of the next personal computing revolution.

But the software still sucks. The apps still suck.

We're building AugmentOS to change that. It's a fully open source operating system for smart glasses that unlocks this new interface for devs and brings their apps into the hands (and on the faces) of users.

This is not another B2B SaaS. We're going to eat Apple and Google's lunch. Help us architect the OS for the next personal computer.

Overview

Mentra is building AugmentOS, the open source operating system for smart glasses. Like Android for smart glasses. Smart glasses hardware is finally ready, and we're building the software ecosystem to unlock the next personal computer.

Our team (ex. MIT, Tsinghua, Google, Salesforce, JITX (YCS18), University of Toronto) has been building smart glasses for over 6 years.

The Opportunity

The hardware was never ready, but breakthroughs in micro-optoelectronics has given us lightweight, all-day wearable smart glasses and put us on the precipice of the next personal computing revolution.

But the software still sucks. The apps still suck.

We're building AugmentOS to change that. It's a fully open source operating system for smart glasses that unlocks this new interface for devs and brings their apps into the hands (and onto the faces) of users.

This is not another B2B SaaS. We're going to eat Apple and Google's lunch. Help us architect the OS for the next personal computer.

Immediate need: The most critical component of AugmentOS is the edge compute - the phone/puck that connects to smart glasses (using raw BLE or their SDK), pushes/pulls data from them, and relays to the cloud. We need to build the iOS version of this. This includes deep iOS Bluetooth/BLE, background processes, streaming data, notifications, websockets, etc.

Higher level: AugmentOS needs a massive upgrade to be cloud-based (currently it’s mostly relying on edge Android apps). We want to team up with someone who can help us architect and build this system from the BLE MCU, to the phone/puck, to the backend, to the API/LLMs/models, to the websocket/webhook/REST SDK.

What it’s like to work with us is very fun and pretty intense. We’re all here because we’re deeply passionate and believe smart glasses are the future. We all wear and use smart glasses all day every day, and expect you will too. We have an new office in San Francisco Dogpatch, where the 2 founders and 2 Founding Engineers currently live and work. We work 7 days a week, morning to night, but do take breaks for exercise, reading, adventures, etc. We’re open to other working styles but expect you’ll be putting in a lot of hours, because you want to. We have a presence in Shenzhen, which is growing (branch office starting there later this year, 2 team members learning Chinese) and you would have the opportunity to join for business trip(s).

Join if you want to be a critical early member of the team that builds the next personal computer.

AugmentOS is the operating system for smart glasses. It runs third party apps locally (as Android apps on an Android phone or tiny Android compute puck) or in the cloud.

Smart glasses need to be super lightweight and low-power. So they use MCUs with low power wireless protocols (BLE) and offload all the compute elsewhere.

The connect to a phone/compute puck (we're building a custom compute puck in Shenzhen right now). The phone/compute puck is running an always-on process that connects to the glasses, receives data from them, and pushes data to them.

The phone/compute puck is basically a relay to the cloud, where most of the magic happens. Transcriptions, LLMs, visual AI, etc. all happens in the cloud.

Third party apps can subscribe to context (audio, video, transcripts, locations, etc.) and can push proactive data (AI insights, translation, notifications, etc.). The AugmentOS-SDK has an Android (edge) and web (cloud) native integration so third parties can write smart glasses apps that run anywhere.

We are a team of deeply technical nerds solving massive problems for the next generation of computing. None of this is remotely easy. Join if you want to help architect the software ecosystem of the next personal computer.