Meta Has Already Won the Smart Glasses Race

By securing a billion-dollar stake in the world’s largest eyewear maker with a massive retail footprint, Meta is building both a moat and a launchpad, leaving Google trailing and Apple way behind.

At Meta’s Q2 2025 earnings call at the end of July, Mark Zuckerberg didn’t hold back. “If you don’t have glasses that have AI,” he warned, “you’re probably going to be at a pretty significant cognitive disadvantage compared to other people.”

Forget smartphones. According to Zuck, the real interface of the future is what’s sitting on your nose. These AI-powered specs, he argues, will “see what we see, hear what we hear, and talk to us” in real time—offering a kind of digital copilot for everyday life. And if that vision sounds a little dystopian, it’s also very, very lucrative.

Meta’s ...