Altina

Fashion-led, privacy-first conversation eyewear that turns premium acetate glasses into an audio AI platform, starting with hearing enhancement. Built with Cubitts, a British eyewear brand, using traditional eyewear construction that supports styles, colors, prescriptions, and optician service. Style and comfort matter more than the technology. Most smart glasses founders lead with chip specs and AI features, but the real barrier to adoption is that people won't wear something that doesn't look and feel good on their face. Altina uses traditional acetate eyewear construction that supports real styles, colors, and prescriptions, with the audio AI system hidden inside the temples rather than routed through the front (which forces limited styles and special hinges). The tech is what makes it useful once they already want to wear it. Tal combines hands-on mechanical engineering experience (Halo Neuroscience, seed-to-series A hardware) with wearable product leadership (Amazon Echo Frames PM). That mix of building complex hardware systems and understanding the consumer wearable market at scale is rare. Wharton MBA and UPenn BS ME round out the business and technical foundation. 1.5 billion people suffer from hearing loss, yet less than 20% use hearing aids due to stigma and discomfort. Camera-based smart glasses face privacy restrictions that limit where they can be worn. AI audio processing has matured to the point where real-time on-device speech enhancement, beamforming, and denoising can fit inside traditional acetate temple frames via partnerships like femtoAI. The convergence of AI audio capability, hearing need, and a design-first approach creates an opening that didn't exist before.