The Meta CEO took the stage on Wednesday to announce a slew of new AI and hardware products — including a teaser of the company’s long-awaited fully holographic glasses, Orion.
The Orion glasses were the news of the day, and in a surprising turn for AR glasses, they looked … pretty slick!
The smart glasses integrate visuals into the lenses, making them the company’s first “true AR” glasses. Notably, they appeared sleeker than the new Snap Spectacles that Snap CEO Evan Spiegel showed off last week. Of course, they still have a ways to go until they truly blend in like Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses.
Zuckerberg ran a sizzle reel of famous names in tech reacting positively to the Orion glasses, from Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang to Reddit CEO Steve Huffman praising them as a leap forward.
Business Insider’s chief correspondent, Peter Kafka, also got an early demo of Orion and wrote that he’d “buy them in a heartbeat.” But people will have to wait a while to get their hands on the AR glasses.
The current Orion prototype isn’t launching to consumers, although Zuckerberg said some external developers will be able to get them. It’ll be the next version, however, that the company eventually launches to the public.
Zuckerberg’s other announcements were more tangible. He showed off limited-edition frames of Meta’s Ray-Ban glasses and a slew of feature updates to the sleeper hit, along with new celebrity voices for its Meta AI chatbots and multi-modal voice and vision features.
The CEO covered some of the big names behind the new Meta AI voices, which range from John Cena to Awkwafina, and he demonstrated some impressive real-time assistance tools and debuted a new entry-level Quest 3S mixed-reality headset that costs $299.
The keynote was a chance for Zuckerberg to outline his vision of the future — and Meta’s role in shaping what could be the next big computing platform.
Wall Street seemed impressed. Meta’s stock was up more than 2% as Zuckerberg exited the stage.
Scroll on to get the full recap of Zuckerberg’s Meta Connect keynote.
