Meta Platforms, Inc. plans to announce at next month's annual Connect conference its push to advance smart glasses development, including the launch of the company's first consumer-facing glasses with a display screen.

According to sources familiar with the matter, this represents one of two new devices Meta plans to unveil at the event. The company will also introduce its first wristband that allows users to control the glasses through hand gestures, the sources said.

Connect is a two-day developer conference focused on virtual reality, augmented reality, and virtual worlds. Originally called Oculus Connect, it adopted its current name after Facebook rebranded its parent company to Meta in 2021.

The glasses, internally codenamed Hypernova, will feature a small digital display mounted on the device's right lens, according to sources familiar with the matter.

The device is expected to retail for approximately $800 and will be sold in partnership with EssilorLuxottica, sources said. In October last year, reports emerged that Meta was collaborating with Luxottica to develop consumer-grade glasses with displays.

Meta began partnering with Luxottica to sell smart glasses in 2021, when the two companies released the first-generation Ray-Ban Stories, allowing users to capture photos or videos through simple voice commands. The partnership has since expanded, with advanced artificial intelligence features added last year that made the second-generation product unexpectedly popular among early adopters.

Luxottica owns multiple eyewear brands including Ray-Ban and holds licenses for many other brands such as Prada. It remains unclear which brand Luxottica will use for the AR glasses, but a job posting published by Meta this week shows the company is recruiting a technical program manager for its "wearables organization," which is "responsible for Ray-Ban AR glasses and other wearable hardware."

In June this year, Meta and Luxottica planned to launch Prada-branded smart glasses. Sources said Prada glasses are known for their thick frames and arms, which could make them a suitable choice for the Hypernova device.

Last year, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg used Connect to showcase the company's experimental Orion augmented reality glasses.

The Orion glasses feature augmented reality capabilities on both lenses, capable of integrating 3D digital visual effects into the real world, but the device was only presented as a prototype to demonstrate the possibilities of AR glasses to the public. Nevertheless, Orion brought some positive momentum for Meta. The Reality Labs division, responsible for hardware device manufacturing, has lost nearly $70 billion since late 2020.

With Hypernova, Meta will finally offer consumers glasses with displays, though some sources say the company has modest sales expectations. This is because the device requires more components than previous generations with voice-only functionality and will be slightly heavier and thicker, sources said.

Luxottica CEO Francesco Milleri said in February that Meta and Ray-Ban have sold 2 million second-generation glasses since 2023. In July, Luxottica stated that smart glasses sales revenue increased more than threefold year-over-year.

As part of the extended agreement announced by Meta and Luxottica in September last year, Meta acquired approximately 3% stake in Luxottica. A source said in June that Meta also secured multi-year brand exclusivity rights for Luxottica's smart glasses technology.

Despite Hypernova featuring displays, the visual capabilities are expected to be limited, sources said. The color display will provide approximately 20 degrees of field of view, meaning it will appear as a small window in a fixed position, primarily for delivering simple information such as received text messages.

Meta's technology chief Andrew Bosworth said earlier this month that having one display offers advantages over two, including lower cost.

"Monocular displays have a lot of advantages," Bosworth said in an Instagram video. "They're affordable, they're lighter weight, and they don't require parallax correction, so they're structurally much simpler."

**Interacting with AI Assistant**

In July, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) disclosed additional details about Meta's upcoming glasses in a letter to lawyers representing Meta. While the letter redacted company and product names, a source confirmed it referred to Meta's Hypernova glasses.

The July 23 letter stated: "This model will enable users to capture and share photos and videos, make phone and video calls, send and receive messages, listen to audio playback, and interact with an AI assistant in different forms and methods, including voice, display, and manual interaction."

CBP's letter is part of routine communication between companies and the U.S. government when determining the country of origin for consumer goods. The company described the product as "new smart glasses" and said the device would have "a lens display function that allows users to interact with visual content generated by smart features, as well as components that provide image data retrieval, processing, and rendering capabilities."

The Hypernova glasses will also come with a wristband that will use technology developed by CTRL Labs, a Meta subsidiary, sources said. Meta acquired CTRL Labs in 2019, a company focused on developing neural technology that allows users to control computing devices through arm gestures.

The wristband is expected to become a key input component for the company's future full AR glasses releases, so gathering data through Hypernova now could improve future versions of the wristband, sources said. Rather than using camera sensors to track body movement like Apple does.

Meta's wristband uses so-called electromyography (EMG) sensor technology that can read and interpret electrical signals from hand movements.

One challenge Meta faces with the wristband is how people choose to wear it, said a person familiar with the product development. If the device is too loose, it won't read users' electronic signals as intended, potentially affecting its performance, the source said. Additionally, the wristband has encountered issues in testing, such as which arm it should be worn on, how it performs on men versus women, and how it works on people wearing long sleeves.

In July, the CTRL Labs team published a paper in Nature journal about their wristband, which Meta referenced in a blog post. In the paper, Meta's team detailed their use of machine learning techniques to make the wristband work with as many people as possible. Additional data collected from the upcoming device should improve these capabilities for future Meta smart glasses.

"We successfully prototyped an EMG wristband with Orion, our first true augmented reality (AR) glasses, but this is just the beginning," Meta wrote in the post. "Our team has developed advanced machine learning models that can translate neural signals controlling wrist muscles into commands that drive people's interactions with glasses, eliminating traditional, more cumbersome input forms."

Meta has recently begun reaching out to developers to start testing Hypernova and the accompanying wristband, sources said. The company hopes to attract third-party developers, particularly those specializing in generative AI, to develop experimental applications that Meta can showcase to generate interest in smart glasses, sources said.

In addition to Hypernova and the wristband, Meta will also announce third-generation voice-only smart glasses in partnership with Luxottica at Connect, a source said.

CBP's July letter also mentioned this device, calling it "next-generation smart glasses." The letter said the glasses would include "components that provide capacitive touch functionality, allowing users to interact with smart glasses through touch gestures."