AnhPhu Nguyen and Caine Ardayfio met in Harvard's makerspace and never stopped building. They made flamethrowers, robotic tentacles, and smart glasses that went viral, capturing more than 80M views. That demo became the foundation for Mira glasses, and they dropped out to build the hardware that could make ambient AI work. AnhPhu shapes the product experience, obsessing over how the glasses feel to wear and use. Caine engineers the low-latency systems that make the technology work in everyday life.  Together, they’re building Mira to solve a fundamental human limitation: memory. Unlike camera-focused competitors, Mira captures audio only, achieving faster response times while protecting privacy.

Mira's AI-powered glasses continuously listen, transcribe, and surface context directly onto the lens, extending focus, memory, and reasoning in everyday life. The glasses achieve sub-700 millisecond latency.

General Catalyst is proud to be leading the seed round for these builders from day one.

Memory as the Bottleneck of Cognition 

We forget names seconds after hearing them. We lose details in meetings. We reach into our phones for context that arrives too late. Memory is a persistent cognitive bottleneck.

Siri and Alexa promised ambient help, but their delays revealed the gap. Machines could answer questions, but not in time to feel like thought. Sub-second AI response times change this. For the first time, assistance can be proactive and conversational, not reactive and procedural. Fast enough to collapse the distance between memory and recall.

Mira is built as a cognitive copilot. While other smart glasses focus on capturing moments with cameras, Mira focuses on retrieving them with audio transcription. It surfaces context in real time. The experience feels less like using a device and more like accessing your own memory.

They've delivered a working prototype that outperforms incumbents on speed.

We recently sat down with AnhPhu and Caine to learn more about their vision for the future of wearables that augment cognition. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

You’ve said memory is humanity’s oldest bottleneck. When did you realize that smart glasses could be the right medium to solve it?

Our bet is that a personalized assistant that truly lives with you and helps proactively is the future of how we interface with AI: remembering everything, knowing the answer to any question, keeping up with complex subjects, and anticipating what you want before you ask. Why smart glasses? Glasses are the best device to capture memories. You can wear them all day while they sense the world around you. They also uniquely allow you to have a private visual display, letting you see information without looking away.

Latency is everything in AR. How did a seven-person team crack sub-second performance where companies with limitless budgets have stumbled?

While other companies want to build every feature (maps, navigation, 3D, games), we focus on doing a few things right: building a highly contextual AI. That focus helps us see how much speed matters to customers. We've spent countless hours benchmarking dozens of models and inference services to deliver the fastest glasses response time on the market.

Always-on recording is powerful but polarizing. How do you design for trust and avoid the “creepy” factor while still delivering on the promise of frictionless recall?

Intentionally, Mira does not have a camera. When you're in meetings or conversations, you're not visually recording people. You're only capturing an audio transcript of what's been said. We don't store audio data, and transcripts are stored on your phone, not our servers. We pride ourselves on never selling or training on your data and instantly deleting all audio, keeping only the transcript, like taking notes in a meeting.

Mira’s early prototypes have gone viral, sparking both fascination and debate. What did you learn from the response?

We learned that the technology for smart glasses is finally here. Smartglasses have become a real-world conversation because the technology is now inexpensive, lightweight, and powerful enough for everyday consumers. The original demo was a privacy awareness campaign, but it showed that AI can enhance our real-world experience. We’re building the smart glasses that people actually want to wear. 

Mira's AI-powered glasses continuously listen, transcribe, and surface context directly onto the lens, extending focus, memory, and reasoning in everyday life. The glasses achieve sub-700 millisecond latency.

Mira remembers the details, so you can focus on the bigger picture. The glasses provide a secure, private assistant that learns throughout your daily life to give you professional insights, helping you excel in your most critical moments, hands-free. All at half the weight and double the battery life of leading smartglasses, designed for real people. This frees time away from critical or tedious work to prioritize the moments that make us human.