Snap plans to sell lightweight, consumer AR glasses in 2026

Summary

Snap is back with a new pair of AR smart glasses, and for the first time in years, it’s ready to sell them to consumers. The company plans to sell these new glasses, called Specs, to consumers starting in 2026, CEO Evan Spiegel announced on Tuesday during the Augmented World Expo in Long Beach, California. A Snap spokesperson tells TechCrunch the glasses will ship in 2026, as well. Snap’s Specs will feature many of the same augmented reality and artificial intelligence capabilities that are available on the company’s developer-facing smart glasses, the Spectacles 5. However, the company says the Specs will be smaller and lighter — ideally making them more innocuous to wear in public than their extremely large predecessors. The Specs will feature see-through lenses capable of displaying graphics to users as if they were projected on the world in front of them. The glasses will also feature an AI assistant powered by Snap’s technology, capable of processing both audio and video. The Specs announcement comes nearly a decade after Snap first attempted to sell consumer smart glasses with the initial launch of Spectacles in 2016 — a product that ended up selling poorly. While Snap was ahead of its time then, the company now faces fierce competition in the AR glasses market from giants like Meta and Google that have recently unveiled AR products of their own. Meta reportedly plans to unveil glasses with a built-in screen, codenamed “Hypernova,” later in 2025. Meanwhile, Google recently announced partnerships with Warby Parker, Samsung, and other companies to develop its Android XR smart glasses. Snap is hoping its SnapOS developer ecosystem — which the company has spent the last several years building out — will give it an edge in the AR race. Many of the millions of AR experiences developers have built for Snapchat and Spectacles, called Lenses, will also work on the new Specs, the company said. Onstage, Spiegel showcased a few of these lenses. One of them, “Super Travel,...