Meta's Chief Product Officer Chris Cox just declared smart glasses the future of computing, hours after the company unveiled its $799 Ray-Ban Display glasses. With neural wristband controls and in-lens displays, Meta's betting big on wearables as the next computing paradigm while Google, Apple, and Snap race to compete.
Meta just doubled down on its biggest bet yet. Chief Product Officer Chris Cox told CNBC Thursday that smart glasses represent the future of computing, positioning the company's freshly announced $799 Ray-Ban Display glasses as the opening salvo in a war for your face.
"We talk to them, we will see with them, we will use gestures the same way we interact with each other to interact with our computers," Cox explained during the interview with Julia Boorstin. "The interfaces will get more natural, and so we certainly believe that the next really important wearable technology is going to be a pair of glasses."
The timing isn't coincidental. Meta revealed its Ray-Ban Display glasses just Wednesday, equipped with small in-lens displays controlled through neural wristband technology that reads hand movements. Users can record videos, send messages through voice commands, or even write messages by tracing letters on their knee - a sci-fi interaction model that Cox says represents just "the basics" of what's coming.
[Embedded image: Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses demonstration showing in-lens display functionality]
But Meta's confidence stems from real momentum. The company's second-generation Ray-Ban Meta glasses, launched in 2023, have already moved 2 million units according to EssilorLuxottica CEO Francesco Milleri. Even more telling, EssilorLuxottica's Q2 earnings report revealed that Ray-Ban Meta revenue more than tripled in the first half of 2025 compared to the previous year, helping drive overall quarterly sales to €7.2 billion ($8.5 billion).
The success of the audio-only Ray-Ban Meta glasses, plus June's launch of Oakley Meta Performance AI glasses, suggests consumers are ready for face-worn computing. Unlike smartphones that demand constant visual attention, smart glasses promise ambient computing - information when you need it, invisible when you don't.
Yet Meta's vision faces a harsh reality check during Wednesday's demo. CEO Mark Zuckerberg couldn't answer a video call from CTO Andrew Bosworth because the accept button failed to appear on the display. These glitches matter when you're asking people to trust glasses with their digital lives.
The competitive pressure is intensifying. Google committed $150 million to develop AI glasses with Warby Parker in May, leveraging its Gemini AI and decades of search expertise. Snap plans to release its sixth-generation AR glasses in 2026, building on years of camera-first social experiences. Most concerning for Meta, Apple reportedly targets smart glasses by late 2026 - and Apple's track record of perfecting nascent categories speaks for itself.
[Video iframe: Chris Cox CNBC interview explaining Meta's smart glasses strategy]
Cox's messaging strategy is telling: he's positioning glasses not as a smartphone replacement but as a more natural computing interface. "We've started with just the basics, which is messaging, which we know is the thing people want to do in a more fluid way," he said. This suggests Meta learned from Google Glass's failure by focusing on specific use cases rather than trying to recreate smartphone functionality on your face.
The neural wristband represents Meta's biggest technical bet. While competitors rely on voice commands and basic gesture recognition, Meta's approach reads electrical signals from your muscles to detect finger movements - potentially enabling precise control without awkward air gestures or constant voice commands.
But the $799 price point reveals Meta's dilemma. Too expensive for mass adoption, too cheap to recoup massive R&D investments. The company needs to prove smart glasses solve real problems before consumers will pay premium prices for first-generation hardware.
Cox's declaration isn't just product marketing - it's Meta's strategic blueprint for surviving the next computing shift. With smartphone growth stagnating and AI demanding new interaction paradigms, smart glasses represent either Meta's path to platform independence or an expensive distraction from its core social media business. The company's early sales momentum suggests consumer appetite exists, but whether Meta can execute flawlessly while facing Apple, Google, and Snap remains the defining question for wearable computing's future.
