Would you purchase a pair of costly, true AR glasses from Meta realizing you’d additionally assist CEO and extoller of “masculine vitality” Mark Zuckerberg? Advanced AI glasses are one of many foremost topics on his thoughts, in keeping with each his public statements to buyers and a leaked memo of an inside all-hands assembly. Beneath the hyperbole and more and more right-wing inflection of Zuck’s public statements, Meta CEO is using excessive on AI and his main efficiency with the corporate’s sensible glasses.
Zuckerberg advised buyers in the course of the firm’s fourth quarterly outcomes name Wednesday that its Ray-Ban Meta glasses had been “an actual hit.” He speculated that “this might be a defining 12 months that determines if we’re on a path in direction of many lots of of thousands and thousands and finally billions of AI glasses.” This comes after a Bloomberg report this month claimed Meta is engaged on a pair of Oakley-style AR glasses for athletes. The firm can be reportedly engaged on a follow-up to the Ray-Ban Meta, codenamed Hypernova, which features a heads-up show.
“Billions” seems like a pie-in-the-sky dream, although the corporate’s AI glasses have reportedly been doing nicely. Leaked memos signed by Meta’s head of its Reality Labs division, Andrew Bosworth, point out that the Ray-Ban Meta glasses and Meta Quest 3s had been a success final 12 months. Business Insider reported that the group growing the corporate’s VR and AR applied sciences beat all product gross sales and consumer targets in 2024. According to the leaked memo, gross sales grew by 40% 12 months over 12 months.
That doesn’t imply that Meta’s Reality Labs division isn’t nonetheless burning cash, simply because it did when the phrase “metaverse” was nonetheless being bandied round. The firm reported near $5 billion in Reality Labs losses within the fourth quarter. Meta’s AR division made solely $1.1 billion in gross sales throughout that very same time. The distinction between then and now could be that Zuckerberg sees a brand new market opening with augmented actuality and AI glasses. In a leaked transcript of an inside all-hands reported by The Verge late Thursday, the Meta CEO mentioned there was a “broad open discipline” for them to leverage its present and future AI glasses.
Despite his statements, Zuck’s glasses aren’t the one sport on the town. CES 2025 was inundated with sensible glasses of all sizes and shapes. Samsung and Apple are additionally engaged on their very own sensible glasses. Meta definitely has a head begin, however that doesn’t imply it’s a shoo-in to win the lengthy race.
Zuck Refuses to Talk to Staff About his Hate of DEI and Love for Donald Trump
Standing in Zuck’s approach could also be Zuck himself. According to current reviews, his “mask-off” second, wherein he decried DEI and changed fact-checking on Facebook and Instagram with a neighborhood notes-like characteristic, hasn’t resulted within the lack of too many world customers. Still, the leaked transcript from the corporate’s all-hands confirmed that many workers had been greater than somewhat involved about how chummy he was getting with President Donald Trump and his ramping-up anti-trans hate campaign. Musk refused to talk to workers about any of these issues.
Instead, Musk mentioned, “We now have a possibility to have a productive partnership with the United States authorities.” This was after Meta already made its Llama AI accessible to U.S. authorities companies.
Zuckerberg advised buyers he deliberate to take a position “billions of {dollars}” in AI infrastructure over the approaching years. That begins with $65 billion in AI and a 2GW information middle incorporating greater than 1.3 million of Nvidia’s graphics processing chips. Zuckerberg, together with each different large U.S. tech agency, is attempting to ignore DeepSeek, which launched a mannequin virtually as succesful as its newest and biggest with out counting on such obtuse information processing.
Zuckerberg ended his inside assembly by telling workers to “buckle up.” It expects to put off workers the corporate considers “low-performers.” He advised workers that “rip[ping] the band-aid off” was “a nicer factor to do for people who find themselves in all probability going to finish up making it anyway.” With feedback like that, is it shocking that workers are leaking these conferences? Not-so-ironically, The Verge reported on extra leaked inside communications saying Meta was seeking to fireplace the leakers.
