Gene Munster, Brian BakerSeptember 17, 2025
Meta Connect Underscores That Glasses Are the Future, and Building That Future Is Hard
Meta
Meta Connect 2025 showcased Zuckerberg’s commitment to making glasses the preferred AI interface of the future, ahead of the phone. The lineup of four new models, priced between $379 and $799 (compared to Apple’s $3,500 Vision Pro), signals Meta’s ambition to sell tens of millions of units next year, up from about 5 million in 2025. Still, the incremental revenue will be so small that it will be hard to notice (adds 1% to Street estimates), and making the technology truly work remains a challenge.

Key Takeaways

1
Zuckerberg has the power to will glasses into reality long term. Near term, the segment will account for about 3% of total revenue.
2
Seamlessly bringing AI to glasses is hard, and they showed they are not ready to go mainstream.
3
There is still tension between AI wearables and the Metaverse.
1

Glasses

While some of the glasses announcements leaked two days ago, the substance of the updates remains material. Meta is expanding the lineup and functionality of glasses because Zuckerberg believes glasses will be the best platform to experience personalized AI, better than the phone. Wearables make it easy to access AI, and having AI always on, processing the world around us, will make us feel smarter.

The bottom line: I believe glasses will go mainstream, but not for a while. My estimate is that it won’t be until 2030 that the company reaches a 50 million units per year run rate. Eventually, I believe the AI wearables opportunity could scale into the high hundreds of millions of units annually.

Getting there has carried a high cost. Meta has invested about $65B Reality Labs since the company’s name change in 2021, along with the expense of advancing Llama, are two reasons why the price to compete is itself a competitive moat.

As for the financial impact of glasses, I believe Meta will sell 10m units in 2026, up from under 5m in 2025. At an average selling price of $450, that implies $4.5B in revenue, or about 2% of overall company revenue. Currently, the Street is expecting $2.8B in Reality Labs revenue next year, up from $2.3B this year. Assuming 75% of the segment’s revenue comes from glasses suggests the Street is modeling around $2.1B in glasses revenue next year. In other words, I believe Meta can double that figure, which would add an incremental 1% to overall revenue.

2

Hardware is Hard

I was bummed to see two glasses demos hit the wall, especially knowing they had worked many times before showtime.

That said, the shortfall underscores how hard it is to bring AI to glasses, and we’re still a few years away from these demos being rock solid.

As I watched the keynote, I kept thinking about Tim Cook emphasizing Apple’s commitment to integrating hardware, software, and services. I left with a greater appreciation for what Apple has accomplished in that category over the past 20 years.

3

AI vs. the Metaverse

From the start of the keynote, Zuckerberg made it clear that this is about both AI and the metaverse. At the highest level, I can see an intersection between these two themes, but I struggle to see them fitting hand in glove.

The announcements, Horizon Studio and new immersive content partnerships with Disney and Universal, land squarely in the VR camp. I see that opportunity as more niche over the long term, topping out at the low hundreds of millions of units per year, up from today’s nascent stage. By contrast, the AI wearables opportunity could reach the high hundreds of millions of units annually.

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