Meta Bets on AI Wearables Despite $80B Losses
According to an internal memo reported by The Information, Meta has set an ambitious target: selling 10 million wearable devices in the second half of 2026 and reaching 6.8 million monthly active users by the end of the year.
Meta is expanding its push into wearable devices, with plans for an AI-powered pendant and a new business service called Wearables for Work, as the company tries to turn hardware from a costly experiment into a major growth engine.
According to an internal memo reported by The Information, Meta has set an ambitious target: selling 10 million wearable devices in the second half of 2026 and reaching 6.8 million monthly active users by the end of the year.
One of the main products in development is an AI pendant, a small body-worn device designed to record conversations, analyze information and generate smart summaries. The technology is reportedly linked in part to Meta’s December 2025 acquisition of Limitless, formerly Rewind, a startup that developed a similar product. After the acquisition, sales of the original device were stopped and the technology was folded into Meta’s hardware efforts.
The move comes despite heavy losses in Meta’s Reality Labs division, which oversees the company’s hardware and mixed-reality projects. In the first quarter of 2026, the division posted an operating loss of $4.03 billion on revenue of just $402 million. Since 2020, Reality Labs has lost more than $80 billion, including $19.1 billion in 2025 alone.
Still, Meta sees wearables, especially smart glasses, as one of its most promising paths forward. The company has sold more than 7 million pairs of its Ray-Ban smart glasses and reportedly controls about 82% of the smart glasses market. It has also expanded the line with models that support prescription lenses.
Meta is also developing a more advanced augmented reality glasses project under the code name Phoenix, expected in 2027.
The competition is growing quickly. Apple is reportedly working on its own AI pendant, smart glasses and camera-equipped AirPods, while Google presented AI-powered smart glasses at I/O 2026.
Research firm Omdia expects AI smart glasses sales to pass 10 million units in 2026. But the pendant category remains uncertain, especially after the failure of Humane’s AI Pin and the disappearance of Limitless as a standalone product.
Meta’s strategy appears to be broader than one device/analysis/young-americans-israel-perception. The company is trying to build an ecosystem of glasses, pendants, workplace services and AI tools, hoping wearables can become a central platform in the next stage of computing.