The San Francisco startup is pitching it at developers, builders, technical creatives, and enterprise users looking for something more open and customizable than most connected wearables.

The idea behind the pitch is certainly an interesting one: to put a genuinely independent Linux machine directly into your field of view.

Prism's display sits in front of the right eye. It uses a full-color LCoS engine and diffractive waveguide with a 30-degree diagonal field of view. Raven says the image appears roughly equivalent to a 16-inch screen that's held at arm's length, with more than 1,500 nits of brightness.

Rather than filling your vision with augmented reality, the idea is to keep apps and information available at a glance; this is reflected in the display's position toward the periphery. Menu navigation is handled primarily through eye gaze and voice, though Bluetooth keyboards, mice, and controllers are also supported. The hardware is rounded out by a 13-MP forward camera, four microphones, and two downward-facing speakers.

System hardware includes an ARM64 processor supporting up to 4 GB of RAM, 32 GB of storage, and SSH access for custom development.

If you're wondering how the device stays charged, the answer is Raven Wings: magnetic battery modules that attach to the glasses' arms and can be hot-swapped without shutting the system down. In other words, the frame itself doesn't need to sit tethered to a charger; you remove a depleted Wing and snap on a fresh one. Two pairs of Wings and a charging case are included with the Prism.

The connection does more than deliver power, too. It routes USB and is intended to double as a modular expansion interface, with Raven floating eventual Wings containing GPS, cellular connectivity, larger batteries, or AI accelerators. None of those modules are shipping yet, but the concept may well have future potential beyond just longer battery life.

Raven has also built some tangible privacy controls into the hardware (a prudent choice given recent privacy concerns surrounding smart glasses). The camera has a physical cover that must be opened before it can operate, while the company's Beakon Lights glow whenever recording is active.