Meta used its Connect 2026 event to position smart glasses as the main gateway to Muse, a personal AI agent designed to follow users beyond phone screens and into camera-equipped, always-worn devices. The company unveiled a lower-priced Ray-Ban Meta Audio model, began selling a third-generation Ray-Ban Meta device, and previewed Meta VR Glasses for spring 2027 at $1,299.99.
Muse is expected to reach Meta’s glasses in the coming months. The agent will support voice commands and respond to what a user is seeing through the glasses’ camera, placing visual context at the center of Meta’s AI strategy. Meta also said Muse will receive its own email address and connect with services including Shopify, Walmart, Best Buy, PayPal, Expedia, Instacart, Notion, GitHub and Box.
Those integrations would give the agent a practical role beyond answering questions. A user could potentially move from identifying a product or place through the camera to searching retailers, managing travel arrangements, organizing work files or handling payments through connected services. Meta did not provide details on the commercial terms governing those third-party relationships.
A three-level hardware strategy
The products shown at Connect form a pricing ladder aimed at different levels of daily use. Ray-Ban Meta Audio is the entry product, offering hands-free audio and AI access without a display. The third-generation Ray-Ban Meta glasses add a camera and improved media features, while the future VR Glasses are intended for immersive entertainment, gaming, work and spatial computing.
Ray-Ban Meta Audio starts at $349, weighs 43 grams and is Meta’s first audio-only glasses product. Pre-orders are open, with shipping scheduled to begin on Oct. 13. Meta said the glasses can run for up to 12 hours on a single charge, while the charging case can extend total use to as much as 48 hours.
The audio-only approach could lower barriers for people who want voice access to Muse but do not need a camera or display. Battery life and weight are central to that category: devices worn through a workday need to feel closer to conventional eyewear than to a headset.
Meta’s third-generation Ray-Ban Meta glasses are already on sale from $449. The company said the model offers up to nine hours of battery life, roughly one hour more than the previous generation. It includes a 12-megapixel camera, 3K video recording and a six-microphone array.
Meta said the microphone system can reduce background noise by more than 90%, a claim that points to a persistent obstacle for voice assistants used outdoors, in crowded public spaces or during travel. Better audio capture would also affect video recording and live communications, areas where camera glasses compete with smartphones and wireless earbuds as much as with other wearable devices.
By the end of 2026, Meta expects to offer more than 100 eyewear styles and configurations across Ray-Ban, Oakley and Meta Glasses branding. The scale of that planned catalog suggests Meta is trying to treat smart eyewear as a consumer product category with conventional style choices, rather than a single experimental device.
VR remains the premium bet
Meta’s VR Glasses, scheduled for spring 2027, would sit at the top end of the lineup with a $1,299.99 listed price. Meta said the device is expected to launch with more than 75 games controlled solely through hand gestures and will support Xbox cloud gaming.
Hand-gesture-only controls could remove the need for dedicated controllers in some applications, though Meta has not detailed which games or productivity tasks will work without them. The price places the device well above the company’s Ray-Ban products and signals a different buyer: someone seeking a dedicated computing and entertainment device rather than lightweight everyday glasses.
The contrast between the products reflects Meta’s attempt to serve two difficult hardware markets at once. Smart glasses depend on comfort, battery efficiency and social acceptability. VR hardware depends more heavily on display quality, software libraries, input systems and sustained use cases that justify a four-figure price.
Muse connects those separate categories by giving Meta a shared AI interface across audio glasses, camera glasses and future immersive hardware. The company is effectively betting that users will interact with an AI agent differently when it can hear spoken requests, access a visual scene and remain available without opening a phone app.
Reality Labs losses continue to fund the effort
Meta’s expanding hardware program remains tied to large losses at Reality Labs, the segment responsible for its virtual and augmented reality efforts. The company reported Reality Labs revenue of $431 million in the second quarter, up 16% from a year earlier, while its operating loss reached $4.619 billion.
Meta said it expects Reality Labs’ full-year 2026 operating loss to be roughly in line with 2025, when the division recorded an operating loss of about $19.19 billion. Those figures show that revenue from consumer devices has not yet covered the cost of building the hardware, software and AI systems Meta views as necessary for its long-term platform strategy.
The spending extends beyond Reality Labs. Meta reported $31.08 billion in capital expenditures during the second quarter and set full-year 2026 capital expenditure guidance of $130 billion to $145 billion. The company has not broken out how much of that total is directly connected to Muse, AI infrastructure or wearable devices.
Meta also did not disclose unit sales for its AI glasses, the number of active users, subscription conversion rates or revenue-sharing arrangements with retail and payments partners linked to Muse. Those missing figures leave the commercial traction of the glasses business difficult to measure, even as Meta increases the number of models and services attached to its AI agent.
For cryptocurrency markets, the rollout offers a more grounded test of AI’s commercial value than token branding alone. Meta’s strategy centers on hardware distribution, payment connections and service integrations—areas that require users, merchants and repeat transactions. Projects claiming exposure to AI will face greater pressure to demonstrate comparable utility rather than rely on general enthusiasm for the sector.
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