Brilliant Labs’ Halo shows what’s possible when intelligent design meets intelligent silicon. As the demand for ambient, context-aware computing grows, we’re likely to see more breakthroughs like this — where the hardware quietly disappears into the background, and all that remains is the experience.
Recently, Brilliant Labs introduced Halo, their latest entry in the smart glasses space — a significant leap from their earlier Frame product. What sets Halo apart isn’t just the sleek, lightweight design or the embedded bone-conduction speakers. It’s the fact that nearly all of the product’s intelligence, perception, and connectivity is handled by a single chip: the Balletto B1 from Alif Semiconductor.
Reviewers like Brilliant Labs’ products because they look and feel like normal glasses – they are not bulky or heavy. And developers love them because they are fully open-source – not just the software, but the hardware as well. In fact, Brilliant Labs describes Halo as a ‘smart glasses platform’ which developers can use as the basis for their own AI glasses product concepts.
Smart glasses pose unique design challenges. They need to process audio, video, and sensor data in real time, run complex AI models, drive displays, and communicate wirelessly — all within a tiny form factor and tight power envelope. The Balletto B1 makes this possible by collapsing multiple traditionally discrete functions into one highly integrated system-on-chip.
The frame of the Halo AI glasses from Brilliant Labs is thin and light – a feature enabled by the Balletto B1 MCU
One Chip, Many Roles
With the introduction of Halo, Brilliant Labs has added new capabilities that Frame did not offer, including bone-conduction speakers embedded in the arms of the frame, and a new color micro-OLED display. Improved on-device AI reduces the need for Brilliant Labs’ Noa AI agent to refer to the cloud (via the wearer’s smartphone). This saves power, and avoids the round-trip time for queries to go to and from the cloud, producing real-time responses to wearer requests for actions such as translating foreign language text.
At the heart of the B1 is an Arm® Cortex®-M55 processor paired with an Ethos™-U55 NPU, capable of delivering up to 46 GOPs of on-device AI performance. This is critical for reducing Halo’s dependence on the cloud. Tasks like real-time translation or contextual awareness can now happen directly on the device — improving responsiveness, preserving privacy, and saving energy by avoiding round trips to a smartphone or remote server.
The B1’s integrated Helium vector extension DSP is purpose-built for efficient audio processing — perfect for Halo’s always-on microphones and bone-conduction speakers. Its support for camera and display interfaces, along with low-power Bluetooth LE, enables seamless communication and user interaction. And with all of this packed into a compact 3.9mm x 3.9mm package, it contributes to the minimalist, eyewear-like aesthetic that has become Brilliant Labs’ signature.
The high level of integration is crucial to Brilliant Labs’ design for the Halo smart glasses: because the Balletto B1 can do so much on its own, few additional chips are required for the glasses’ main functions, which means that Brilliant Labs can make the product’s frame thin and light.
A Platform, Not Just a Product
What makes Halo especially exciting is that it’s more than a consumer device — it’s a fully open-source platform. Both the hardware and software are open to developers, allowing them to prototype and build their own smart glasses applications atop a proven foundation.
Brilliant Labs’ AI agent, Noa, leverages the B1’s capabilities to interact with users in a more human-like way. With its ability to interpret audio, visual, and contextual cues, NOANoa can hold multi-sensory conversations, recall past interactions, and assist in the moment — effectively serving as a memory-augmenting companion.
Making Integration Invisible
In wearables, integration isn’t just an engineering convenience — it’s a design enabler. The more functionality that can be condensed into a single chip, the less hardware is needed overall. Fewer components mean slimmer frames, lighter devices, and longer battery life. For Halo, the high level of integration that the Balletto B1 provides is what made its form factor and feature set feasible.
The attractive design and futuristic functionality of Halo is a testament to the ingenuity and skill of the Brilliant Labs development team: kudos to them – and Alif is pleased to have played our part in helping Brilliant Labs get the product to market quickly and efficiently.