Interface 4 Is Here

6 years ago, we realized that humanity would go through five fundamental human-computer-interface paradigms: laptop, desktop, smart phone, smart glasses, BCI.

Today, the fourth paradigm is upon us. And after 6 years of building, designing, and using smart glasses every day, our team is uniquely positioned to win this next paradigm.

We're entering a pivotal moment for humanity. One in which we transition to the next personal computing interface, one which is more naturally conforming to the human, and one which is natively designed for AI.

We're on the very cusp of a revolution, but one single critical component is missing. That's what we're here to solve. And that's what we'll tell you about below.

Timeline

2018

2020

2022

2024

Cayden 凯登 Pierce

CEO/CTO/Founder

Cayden leads Mentra, overseeing software, hardware, and operations across San Francisco and Shenzhen. Seven years ago, in his dorm room, he set out with the mission to increase bandwidth between mind and machine. That mission led him to build custom smart glasses, collaborate with Steve Mann (inventor of smart glasses), travel North America in a self-built RV hacker lab, and develop proactive AI agents at the MIT Media Lab. In late 2024, he left MIT to build the OS that will power the next 8 billion personal computers.

Alexander Israelov

Head of Software/Founder

Israelov leads Mentra’s software team in San Francisco, building MentraOS, the operating system and app store for smart glasses. In 2021, a small shard of glass launched into his right eye, and he needed glasses for the first time. He immediately saw the potential of smart eyewear and began building smart glasses in his dorm room. He’s led open source smart glasses projects since then and founded Mentra in 2024 to build the OS that will power the next 8 billion personal computers.

Nicolo Micheletti

Founding Engineer, Head of Apps

Nicolo leads app development at Mentra, bouncing between Shenzhen and San Francisco. In recent years, he’s built several projects at the intersection of proactive AI and smart glasses, and previously conducted research in generative AI and natural language processing. In late 2024, he dropped out of Tsinghua University in Beijing to work on MentraOS.

Isaiah Ballah

Founding Engineer, Head of Cloud

Isaiah, founding engineer and Head of Cloud. Known for juggling 100 personal projects at once, he dropped all of them to focus on building MentraOS. Initially invited to hack on the platform for a single week, he flew from Seattle to San Francisco in February 2025 to build out the cloud platform… He's been here ever since. Isaiah interned at Google and Tableau, he first collaborated with Cayden during their undergraduate years, hacking on wearables, now he's building the future of smart glasses with Mentra.

Thomas Tee

Head of Hardware

Thomas leads Mentra’s hardware team in Shenzhen, building custom smart glasses hardware. Thomas previously built fitness trackers at FitBit, tablets and mice at Microsoft, smart watches at Fossil, and has worked in China, Singapore, Malaysia, and Vietnam. He utilizes his 20 year of experience in consumer electronics manufacturing and fluency in 5 languages to build the world’s most advanced smart glasses hardware.

Roger Pincombe

Head of Developer Experience

Roger leads developer experience at Mentra, building the dev platform and SDK, and running developer events. He’s been developing smart glasses apps since making teleprompter, karaoke, and facial recognizer on Google Glass. He has over a decade as a senior Software Engineer at places like Adobe and Microsoft, founded multiple startups, and won over 15 hackathons.

Carl Allen

Head of Eyewear Design

Carl leads Mentra’s eyewear design - from initial sketches to working hand-in-hand with the mechanical, electronics, and manufacturing teams. He’s an eyewear designer with over 20 years of experience, including 10 years of experience in smart eyewear, and has designed eyewear for organizations like Calvin Klein and Nike.

Celine Yixiaqian

Head of China Logistics

Celine is Mentra’s point person for logistics, business, and hiring in Shenzhen. She utilizes fluency in 5 languages to help coordinate operations across China, Hong Kong, and worldwide. She’s a licensed legal professional with over 10 years in law and tax in China. Celine is a force of nature - for your own sake, please never tell her something can’t be done.

Tomas Vega

Advisor, Wearables/Micro-electronics/HCI/Startups

Tomas is an expert in human augmentation technologies. He spent years at UC Berkeley and MIT Media Lab building technology to upgrade human capabilities. Now, he’s CEO/CTO/Founder of Augmental, building the highest bandwidth hands-free mouse ever made for hundreds of paralyzed users. Tomas provides invaluable wearables, micro-electronics, and startup advise.

Nils Pihl

Advisor, Spatial Computing/Memetics/Startups

Nils is an expert in meme theory and spatial computing. He’s spent the last decade building startups after a career as a behavioural engineer advising organization like the World Bank and Apple. Nils advises Mentra on spatial computing, go-to-market, and memetics.

Stephen Wolfram

Advisor, AI/Personal Intelligence

Stephen Wolfram is a world reknowned genius known for his work in AI, math, and physics. He’s CEO of Wolfram Research; Creator of Mathematica, Wolfram|Alpha & Wolfram Language; and Author of A New Kind of Science and other books. Stephen provides advise around AI and personal intelligence systems.

Terry Huhtala

Advisor, Strategy/Finance/GTM

Terry is a veteran operator and financial strategist with decades of experience across the automotive and manufacturing industries. He previously served as CFO of Nemak, overseeing $40B in revenue, and held senior leadership roles at Ford. As the former founder and CEO of a Mexican tool and die company, he brings relentless founder energy and a track record of solving complex problems on an international scale. Terry advises Mentra on strategy, go-to-market, and finance.

YOU?

Open Position

We're always looking for talented people to join our team. Could this be you?

Our Roots

In late 2024, Cayden dropped out of MIT, Israelov quit his job in Hong Kong, Mentra got funded by YCombinator, and the team transitioned to full time building MentraOS.

But we didn't start here. In 2018, Cayden realized that technology is not seperate from our mind, but an extension of it. Like the neocortex extended our old brain, our technological exocortex further expands our cognition. Cayden realized that the most impactful technologies are those that increase the bandwidth between human and machine intelligence. He saw the five phases of human computer interaction, and began building technology to fuel the next paradigm shift to smart glasses.

In late 2021, Cayden began building a pair of smart glasses with an advanced embedded microphone array. At the same time, Israelov was separately building Telescope custom smart glasses with display. The two met on Reddit, had a call, and teamed up. 8 months later, they went to CES 2023 to present the OpenSourceSmartGlasses.

In 2023, Cayden and Israelov made the most important realization of their lives: just like smart phones needed Android, smart glasses similarly need an entirely new kind of operating system.

Smart Glasses Have Arrived

We were promised smart glasses for years, but the hardware was never ready.

Now the hardware is here, but the apps are not and software ecosystem is not.

We're solving that with MentraOS – the smart glasses operating system which brings AI agents and apps to your smart glasses.

Apps Become Agents

Apps are passive tools which wait for us to to tell them what to do.

Now, apps are becoming AI agents, which figure out for themselves how to help us.

These agents need context and the ability to provide us with proactive information.

Smart glasses are the ultimate AI interface because they provide AI agents with context and proactivity.

Smart Glasses are the Ultimate AI Interface, But There's a Problem

Thanks to the rapid rise of ChatGPT and LLMs, the AI is mature. Further, miniaturization of opto-electronics for AR is finally enabling smart glasses hardware in an all-day form factor.

But something's still missing. Today's operating systems don't allow for the proactive AI agents that will enable this next personal computing interface.

Building proactive wearable agents isn't possible on Android/iOS because:

Multiple agents must access contextual sensors
OS must orchestrate proactive information
Agents must run 24/7
Devs need to write one agent that works on any pair of smart glasses