Brilliant Labs

Brilliant Labs, a Singapore-based company, is the creator of the open-source, pocket-sized AR lens, “Monocle.” The device can be attached to any eyewear or held up to the eye, incorporating GenAI to provide personalized assistance. The device communicates with OpenAI's server for computing processes, and the responses are then transmitted to the lens via Bluetooth from the user's phone.

Monocle, priced at USD 349, features a 20° field of view (FOV) and includes five different processors, one of which is a hackable field-programmable gate array (FPGA) accelerator chip. This chip manages data from the device's camera, microphone, and capacitive touch sensor. The use of low-power electronics and miniaturized parts allows the lens to be compact and lightweight, weighing only 15 g.

As of June 2023, a smartphone was required to relay information between Monocle and cloud-based AI applications. However, the company's long-term goal was to establish a direct connection between the hardware and the cloud, eliminating the need for a phone host. The ultimate vision was to run deep-learning models directly on the AR devices, which would reduce latency and maintain functionality even without an internet connection.

In August 2023, the company launched its arGPT platform compatible with iOS, offering GenAI capabilities on smart glasses and wearables. Following this, Brilliant Labs announced the addition of Stability AI to its Monocle in October 2023, allowing users to create AI-generated images by prompting it to edit images captured from its camera via voice commands.

Brilliant Labs' business model includes selling hardware and providing services powered by LLMs. The company has integrated with GPT due to its well-documented API, but is continually seeking more compact LLMs due to the compute-intensive nature of GPT. The company noted that it was exceeding its sales targets as of June 2023, with nearly 2,000 developers in its Discord community. The user data collected by the sensors enhances the AI services on the platform, improving user personalization. In August 2023, the company launched its arGPT platform compatible with iOS, offering GenAI capabilities on smart glasses and wearables.

Key competitors: None comparable (Brilliant Labs combines computer vision capabilities with AR to identify and analyze objects in the environment).