He helped build Meta’s smart-glasses technology. Now he wants to take on Big Tech’s grip on personal AI
AI -powered smart glasses promise to keep your phone in your pocket, but their usefulness depends on how much work they can take off your day. Meta ties its glasses to its own AI services, while Google is courting eyewear makers with Gemini. As an AI assistant learns a wearer’s preferences, it can become more useful and harder to replace. If that knowledge cannot move to a competing brand,…
Ash Saulsbury spent seven years at Apple, working as a systems architect before joining Meta in 2017. He served as product lead for wearable reality products, helping incubate Meta's smart-glasses technology. Although he left Meta before its Ray-Ban glasses reached consumers, he describes the project as an extension of the company's advertising business. Saulsbury later became vice president of architecture for Microsoft's mixed-reality products, working with Qualcomm to develop chips for eyewear.
Saulsbury now leads Awear AI, a startup that aims to allow consumers to switch eyewear brands without losing their AI assistants' data. His company's software platform, Agentic System One (AS-One), is designed for eyewear makers to integrate into their products, beginning with Qualcomm's Snapdragon AR1+ processor. Awear focuses on privacy, ensuring that consumers maintain control over their data and encryption keys, even when switching to different brands.
The company's COO, Jennifer Van Beek, brings experience in luxury branding, while co-founder Lila Tretikov brings expertise in open-source software and trust. Awear's platform includes an encrypted communications network for AI agents to interact with users and preserve information across devices.
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