Raven Resonance founder Thomas Suarez demos AR glasses built in San Francisco — ambient computing under 8 figures

Raven Resonance: ambient computing glasses, built in San Francisco for under $10M

Thomas Suarez has been wearing AR hardware daily for over twelve years. That's the founding premise of Raven Resonance — that no one builds a wearable worth using every day without actually using it every day.

The product is Raven Prism, AR glasses Suarez describes as an "ambient computer." The framing is deliberate. Where AR implies overlaying graphics onto the world, ambient computing means technology that surfaces when you need it and disappears when you don't. The two core use cases Suarez has converged on are microinteractions — navigation, notifications, music controls, in and out within five to ten seconds — and hands-free reference material, where a user can AirPlay their phone screen or pin contextually relevant information while their hands are occupied.

“We're working on Raven Prism which is the first ambient computer in the form of glasses... When we started this company, investors told us it was going to cost over $100M to bring this product to market. We're going to be shipping later this summer to the first batches, and we've done it with under 8 figures.”

Hardware specs

The device runs Linux on ARM64, the same architecture as Apple Silicon Macs, meaning it can run most ARM64 applications and accepts SSH connections. Field of view is 30 degrees diagonal, which Suarez says is equivalent to a 16-inch MacBook at arm's length. The more meaningful metric, in his view, is pixels per degree: high PPD at 30 degrees produces something that functions like a laptop display in front of you rather than a narrow heads-up strip.

Eye tracking is built in via two small cameras inside the frame, feeding a dedicated coprocessor that processes gaze data locally and passes only a gaze vector to the main SOC. Raw camera images never reach the main chip — a privacy-by-architecture choice Suarez says has driven positive early reception.

Power runs through hot-swappable batteries on the temple arms, which Raven calls Raven Wings. Both detach and are designed for all-day use. The port also doubles as an expansion interface for future hardware modules. Raven plans to release a hardware developer kit later this year.

On privacy more broadly, the device includes a physical camera cover that must be manually removed to activate the camera — a visible signal to people nearby that recording is happening.

Capital and manufacturing

Investors told Suarez at the start that bringing an AR device from concept to mass production would cost over $100M. Raven Resonance has done it for under $10M (Suarez says "under 8 figures"). The company is not using an ODM reference design. Every unit is designed and assembled in its San Francisco lab, which Suarez credits for rapid iteration velocity on a small team. Components are sourced globally, but design and assembly stay in-house and in the US.

First batch shipments are planned for later this summer, with a full launch in San Francisco in the coming months.

Market and go-to-market

Raven is targeting technical creatives first — developers, engineers, musicians, filmmakers — before moving toward mass consumer. The company also has enterprise customers already signed, which Suarez says came partly because designing to tight consumer constraints naturally translates to enterprise.

On the killer-app question, Suarez sidesteps the search for a single breakout use case and instead draws an analogy to the original iPhone: it was a phone, an iPod, and a browser on day one — enough to replace something people already carried, before the App Store created Uber and DoorDash. His read is that AR needs its iPod moment before it gets its iPhone moment, and Prism is built around that constraint.

Billion daily active users in AR is probably a decade away, he says. Tens to hundreds of millions per year is a more reasonable four-to-five-year target.