Meta’s vision of AI-powered glasses as the next must-have device is about to face a major test.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg set the bar high at Meta Connect in 2024 with the not-for-mass-market technology in its Orion glasses. Now he has to take the next step in marketable wearables — and get consumers to shell out.
Zuckerberg is expected to take the stage at Meta’s Menlo Park headquarters for the company’s annual Meta Connect conference to lay out his vision for Meta glasses, headsets, and the future of contextual AI.
The stakes are high. Meta is spending billions on AI research and hardware while competitors like Apple, OpenAI, and Google are chasing the same market.
Meta Connect is Zuckerberg’s chance to prove the company’s sprawling investments in wearables, software, and AI are converging into something consumers would potentially pay more for.
A look back at Meta Connect 2024
Last year, Zuckerberg generated major buzz with a prototype of the Orion glasses, Meta’s first true attempt at fully holographic AR. He also laid out a vision of wider adoption of AI glasses.
Though still a developer-only product, Orion impressed early testers, including Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Reddit’s Steve Huffman. The demo also earned positive reviews from Business Insider’s own Peter Kafka, who said he would “buy them in a heartbeat.”
At the event, Zuckerberg also rolled out updates to existing products, such as transparent Ray-Ban Meta frames, new celebrity voices for Meta AI, and a budget-friendly Quest 3S headset at $299.
Meta’s stock rose more than 2% during Zuckerberg’s keynote, and the Ray-Ban smart glasses also became a hit, with sales surpassing 2 million units by early 2025. In May, Zuckerberg announced that Meta AI now has around 1 billion monthly active users across Meta’s apps.
What to watch at Meta Connect 2025
Leaks and reports suggest Zuckerberg will use this year’s keynote to shift focus from experimental prototypes to products that it hopes will be widely adopted.
Orion is equipped with cutting-edge technology and costs $10,000 to produce per pair. Meta’s test this year is whether it can release a stepping-stone product in terms of price point and capabilities, and whether Zuckerberg could convince consumers to pay more for a pair of glasses than the current Ray-Ban Meta model, which starts at $299.
Here is what we might see:
- Hypernova smart glasses: The codename was first reported by The Verge, and it is expected to be a stepping stone model with an integrated HUD display that is more expensive than the existing glasses, but far less costly than Orion.
- Ray-Ban Meta updates: According to Meta’s leaked video from Monday, new features may be available, including a neural wristband using surface electromyography.
- Oakley Sphaera smart glasses: Based on Meta’s leaked video, this would be a sport-focused model with a center-mounted camera aimed at cyclists and athletes.
- Quest headsets: It is unclear if Quest 4 will be previewed this year, but Meta may preview its ultralight headset, “Puffin,” first reported by The Information and set for release in 2026.
- Meta AI upgrades: Based on BI’s previous reporting, Meta is going through an AI overhaul to improve contextual assistance, real-time translation, and integrations across glasses, apps, and Horizon OS.
What’s at stake
This year’s Meta Connect event comes during an escalating talent war in Silicon Valley. Not including the billions that Reality Labs, the division behind AR/VR, has lost in 2025, Meta has been dangling multimillion-dollar compensation packages to lure AI researchers and hardware engineers, and it seems to be working.
Earlier this year, the company launched Meta Superintelligence Labs under Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang. To bring Wang on board, Meta invested $14.8 billion in the startup for a 49% non-voting stake.
In July, Meta lured away a co-creator of ChatGPT from OpenAI and appointed him chief scientist of its Superintelligence Labs. The company has also recruited three researchers behind OpenAI’s Zurich office — Lucas Beyer, Alexander Kolesnikov, and Xiaohua Zhai — who had spent time at Google’s DeepMind.
With all this AI talent and new hardware, Meta needs to wow consumers and Wall Street again.
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