Meta has taken an early lead in the race for the post-smartphone world by pairing AI hardware with fashion, not just software.
In a private demo at Meta's Menlo Park headquarters, the company showed off a growing line of smart glasses, including the flagship Ray-Ban Wayfarer camera-enabled model, Ray-Ban Display glasses with a 'neural' wristband, new audio-only glasses without a built-in camera, Aviator styles, and Orion augmented reality prototypes.
The Ray-Ban Display glasses project a high-resolution digital box inside the right lens and let the wearer control objects on screen with finger movements. Users can tap a pointer finger and thumb together to open an app, or say, 'Hey, Meta,' to start chatting with an AI bot.
Meta's strategy rests on a simple bet: that the next major platform will be a wearable device people already want to wear. Alex Himel, Meta's vice president of wearables, said customers use the smart features only about 10% of the time, which makes design and weight crucial. EssilorLuxottica held the glasses to 50 grams or below for most models, and the company said the flagship camera glasses now have an updated nine-hour battery life.
The market is still small, but the competition is intense. The report said Silicon Valley's elite companies are racing to build AI-friendly hardware, with OpenAI, reportedly Elon Musk's SpaceX, Apple, and smaller startups all working on new devices. Musk disputes the report. At stake is control over how billions of people access AI, regardless of which bot is smartest.
Meta is not leading in model quality. Its AI models generally lag those of OpenAI and Anthropic, the report said. But the company is ahead in AI-enabled glasses, and that lead appears to be paying off. Meta's smart-glasses sales tripled last year, and EssilorLuxottica said it sold 7 million pairs of AI-enabled glasses in 2025.
The company also unveiled a hologram feature that scans a user's face and records expressions, creating a 3D animated simulacrum. When worn during a WhatsApp call, the user's hologram appears on the other person's screen, and their hologram can appear in the glasses if they have one. It is an ambitious pitch, but one that also raises privacy concerns.
There are still technical limits. The display glasses did not always respond to thumb swipes and sometimes lagged after voice commands. Meta's AI also occasionally struggled to identify objects cleanly, including when it tried to calculate calories in a tray of food. The company said there is a natural learning curve and that the tech usually works for most people without issue.
Meta also announced a new pair of virtual reality glasses that it says weigh only 100 grams and will ship in the spring for $1,299. The new audio-only glasses start at $349, while the Ray-Ban Display glasses start at $799 and the third-generation flagship camera-enabled Ray-Bans cost $449.
The market has already voted for the category. Capital rewards clear rules, strong products, and devices that people actually want to wear. Meta's advantage is not just technical; it is commercial, and in the next hardware platform that may matter more than model bragging rights.
