It’s Meta’s turn to reveal to the world what it’s been working on.
Meta Connect kicks off on Wednesday afternoon, and the tech industry is anticipating some flashy new hardware.
The annual developer conference, hosted by Facebook’s parent company, will likely be marked by AI announcements, metaverse updates, and maybe even a look at some new smart glasses.
It’s the first keynote since Meta added AI to its Ray-Ban smart glasses, which were created through its partnership with luxury eyewear giant EssilorLuxottica.
During the second-quarter earnings report, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that the smart glasses had “good traction” and were selling better than expected.
Still, Reality Labs, the department responsible for Meta’s VR, AR, and the metaverse, is bleeding money. Zuckerberg has positioned both AI and the metaverse as long-term bets that may take years to pay off. Meta previously said it expects spending to outpace revenue “due to our ongoing product development efforts and investments to further scale our ecosystem.”
The Connect keynote could be Meta’s chance to show investors the projects it’s rumored to be working on, like the latest model of the Quest headset — as the company competes directly with Apple’s Vision Pro — or the long-rumored AR glasses prototype known internally as project “Orion.”
With Meta’s AI chatbot integrated into its apps including Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp, you can also expect some updates on those efforts as the company looks to keep users inside its ecosystem.
We’ll be live-blogging the event as it streams on Meta’s Facebook page at 1 p.m.
