Hey everyone,

I recently had the chance to visit the Mentra office in Shenzhen, China, and sit down with their CEO, Cayden Pierce, u/hackalackalot, for an in-depth interview about their open-source **operating system for smart glasses**. 

We covered a lot of ground in this **Part 1 of 2**. Cayden explained that the current state of smart glass development is fragmented. Every time a new pair of glasses comes out, developers have to rebuild their apps from scratch. Mentra's goal is to create a single, unified software framework. Their vision is an OS that allows multiple AI agents and apps to run simultaneously and access the camera and microphone at the same time. The idea is to create a common pipeline that handles the data stream from the glasses to the cloud and back. A key goal is true cross-compatibility: **write one app, and it runs on any pair of glasses** (and even on any phone, Android or iOS).

Mentra OS is available for Even Realities G1 and Vuzix Z100 and Mentra will continue to support future generations of these glasses. They will even partner with more AR / smart glasses companies. At the same time, they launched their own AI Glasses, Mentra Live, for developers and camera-based AI use cases. Cayden explains why they will launch their first **smart glasses with display** in 2026 and why the display is critical! 

We go deeper on the display glasses in **Part 2 of 2** of this interview (link in comments later) and talk about the **Path to Full AR** Glasses. We also talk about using **Reddit and Discord** as a platform for community-driven development. And about what types of apps will be in demand in the near future and can create a **sustainable business for developers**. Not only as consumer products, Cayden predicts that in the next 18 months we will see millions or tens of millions of AI glasses being adopted in industry.

Best,  
Norman

Here's my interview with Mentra - We talk about their OS for Smart Glasses and the upcoming Mentra Display Glasses