Bobak Tavangar (Brilliant Labs) on the Power of Combining Open Source AR Hardware and Multimodal AI

AR Show with Jason McDowall

Bobak Tavangar is the co-founder and CEO of Brilliant Labs, a company creating an open-source AR glasses hardware platform and pairing that with powerful generative AI models to help you engage with the real world.

Bobak studied at George Washington and Georgetown universities before completing a graduate degree at Cambridge University.

Bobak is a serial entrepreneur with a core theme running through his entrepreneurial experiences: how to create better ways for people to find and utilize information based on the context of where they are and what’s around them.

Bobak also worked for a while as a program lead at Apple.

In this conversation, Bobak covers a number of topics, including:

- dating advice for physicists,
- finding the essential essence of a product,
- his rationale for developing open source AR hardware,
- the powerful combination of generative AI and AR,
- the lure of pursuing a broad set of use cases vs being laser focused,
- recent fundraising success and advice,
- where the company is going,
- and more.

Links From The Episode

- Article: [This AR Monocle Device Is Designed To Be Hacked](https://vrscout.com/news/this-ar-monocle-device-is-designed-to-be-hacked/) by Kyle Melnick for VRScout

- Article: [Singapore AI-Powered AR Wearable Startup Scores $3 Million From Oculus And Siri Cofounders](https://www.forbes.com/sites/zinnialee/2023/06/28/singapore-ai-powered-ar-wearable-startup-scores-3-million-from-oculus-and-siri-cofounders/?sh=47e427995d2a) by Zinnia Lee for Forbes

- Article: [Brilliant Labs raises $3M for generative AI-based AR glasses](https://venturebeat.com/metaverse/brilliant-labs-raises-3m-for-generative-ai-based-ar-glasses/) by Dean Takahashi at VentureBeat

- Article: [Brilliant Labs Monocle: The World's Smallest AR Glass Is Here!](​​https://blog.learnxr.io/extended-reality/brilliant-labs-monocle-review) by Dilmer Valecillos for Learn XR

- Video: [Monocle: The Future of Open Source AR + Interview with the CEO!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0N3TPATaFyo) by Sumit Basra

- Book: [The Creative Act: A Way of Being](https://amzn.to/3Rb0suO) by Rick Rubin

- [Episode Transcript](https://otter.ai/u/IFvUlHLeMMXLtkDvGlKTe2ORnLY)

You can find all of the show notes at thearshow.com. Please consider contributing to my Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/theARshow.