Meta smart glasses

Smart Eyewear Meets Luxury: Meta Collaborates with EssilorLuxottica to Renew Smart Glasses Tech

Tech giant Meta has announced a joint venture with EssilorLuxottica. The Franco-Italian eyewear brand solidified a 10-year partnership with Meta to continue the development of smart eyewear.

This collaboration comes as an extension, as EssilorLuxottica and Meta have been in partnership since 2019 to create Ray-Ban-branded smart glasses that blend fashion and technology.

The world’s leading optical brand’s partnership with Meta has yielded impressive results, particularly with the latest version of Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses. Launched in 2023, the MetaX Essilor Luxottica collection quickly became a customer favorite, outselling all the previous smart glasses collections. While the previous collections faced challenges becoming the new hot thing, the most recent iteration outpaced all previous collections.

According to Reuters, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, in a statement, said, “I'm proud of the work we've done with EssilorLuxottica so far, and I'm excited about our long-term roadmap ahead. We have the opportunity to turn glasses into the next major technology platform, and make it fashionable in the process,”

The newly launched smart glasses range will offer users various features like the ability to make phone calls, listen to music, and take photos with just the press of a button on the right temple.

Welcomed in India later this year, the EssilorLuxottica smart glasses have made strides in artificial intelligence features ever since they were introduced to US and Canadian customers in May 2023.

However, till now there has been no information on whether Meta also holds a financial stake in this collaboration. Talking about the deal with Meta, EssilorLuxottica CEO Francesco Milleri said, “The incredible work we've done with Meta, still in its early stages, has already proven to be an important milestone in our journey to making glasses the gateway to the connected world.”

Financial stakes or not, this collaboration stands as the single biggest opportunity to bring Augmented Reality (AR) into the mainstream. While Meta has been looking to boost its place in the AR space, this step can prove to be the stepping stone to the domination of Meta in Smart wearables.

With this collaboration working on many levels, EssilorLuxottica’s extended deal with Meta signals a strong belief in the potential of smart eyewear, even as the technology continues to evolve.