Meta partners with sports eyewear brand Oakley to launch AI-powered glasses
Meta said on Friday it has teamed up with Oakley to release
AI-powered smart glasses
, expanding its push into wearable tech after the success of
Ray-Ban Meta glasses
.
The social media company is expanding its partnership with Oakley and Ray-Ban-parent EssilorLuxottica amid growing consumer interest in AI-powered wearable devices.
Meta has sold millions of Ray-Ban Meta glasses since their launch and said its "
Oakley Meta HSTN
" will feature a hands-free
high-resolution camera
, open-ear speakers, water resistance and Meta AI capabilities.
The limited-edition product will be available for preorder starting July 11 at $499, with additional products starting at $399 launching later this summer.
Meta said the product line would roll out in North America, Australia and several European countries, with plans to expand to Mexico, India and the United Arab Emirates by the year-end.
Live Events
The Oakley Meta HSTN will debut this month at several major sporting events including Fanatics Fest and UFC International Fight Week.
Discover the stories of your interest
Blockchain
5 Stories
Cyber-safety
7 Stories
Fintech
9 Stories
E-comm
9 Stories
ML
8 Stories
Edtech
6 Stories
Smaller rival Snap said earlier this month it would launch its smart glasses, called
Specs
, for consumers next year. Companies such as Google are also exploring similar investments.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
India.com
an hour ago
- India.com
Meet man who flies military aircraft, owns a private island, much wealthier than Mukesh Ambani, Adani; net worth is Rs..., he is world's second....
Larry Ellison is wealthier than Mukesh Ambani and Gautam Adani combined. (File) Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison has replaced Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg as the second-richest individual in the world, boasting a net worth of $247.9 billion, which is more than the combined wealth of Indian business tycoons Mukesh Ambani ($109.5 billion), and Gautam Adani ($62.6 billion). Who is Larry Ellison? Larry Ellison is the co-founder of US multinational tech giant Oracle Corporation. The 80-year-old owns 41 percent of the company's shares, and his wealth has exponentially increased due to a recent surge in Oracle's stock prices. As per Bloomberg, Ellison's wealth surged by a whopping $41 billion in just two days, including $25 billion in a single day last week. Larry Ellison co-founded Oracle in 1977 as a database software company, and over the years, the firm has transformed into a global cloud computing powerhouse. Ellison, 80, currently serves at the Chairman and CTO at Oracle. Larry Ellison net worth Owing to the stellar performance of Oracle stocks, Larry Ellison's net worth has surged to $247.9 billion, making him the second wealthiest person globally, behind Tesla CEO Elon Musk– the world's richest man– who has a net worth of $409 billion, according to Forbes Real-Time Billionaires List. Interestingly, Larry Ellison has more wealth than the total annual GDP of some small countries including, Hungary ($237 billion), Qatar ($222 billion), Ukraine ($205 billion), Nigeria ($188 billion), Morocco ($165 billion) and Kuwait ($153 billion). Larry Ellison's bold and flashy lifestyle Unlike many billionaires who prefer to lead quieter lives, Larry Ellison is known for bold and flashy lifestyle, which can be gauged from the fact that he is a licensed fighter jet pilot and owns a military aircraft. Ellison likes to live a lavish lifestyle, and even owns a private island in Hawaii. In 2012, Ellison purchased 98% of Lanai, Hawaii's sixth largest island, for a reported $300 million. Larry Ellison and Elon Musk Larry Ellison is a close friend of Elon Musk, and is a major investor in Musk's Tesla. 'I don't know how many people know this… but I am a close friend of Elon Musk and a big investor in Tesla,' Ellison revealed in a 2018 interview. The Oracle boss has also come to Musk's defense during several controversies involving the world's richest man.
Time of India
an hour ago
- Time of India
Not just co-founder's company, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg also wanted to buy another ex-OpenAI employee's AI startup
Meta CEO has reportedly explored acquiring several prominent artificial intelligence (AI) startups to accelerate the company's development in the field. According to recent reports, Meta held preliminary discussions to purchase Perplexity, led by CEO Aravind Srinivas, and Safe Superintelligence (SSI), the new venture from former co-founder Ilya Sutskever . Tired of too many ads? go ad free now It has also been claimed that Zuckerberg showed interest in buying Thinking Machines Lab , a startup founded by former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati . Citing sources familiar with the matter, The Verge said that the talks did not advance to the formal offer stage due to disagreements over valuation and strategic alignment. Notably, Murati's AI startup has closed on a $ 2 billion investment at a $10 billion valuation. OpenAI CEO recently stated that Meta has aggressively tried to poach OpenAI employees, offering signing bonuses as high as $100 million along with substantial annual compensation packages. Speaking on the "Uncapped" podcast, Altman addressed the rivalry between the two companies. 'I've heard that Meta thinks of us as their biggest competitor,' he said. 'Their current AI efforts have not worked as well as they have hoped, and I respect being aggressive and continuing to try new things,' he added. Meta acquires ScaleAI, hires its CEO The canvassing efforts coincide with the formation of a new AI leadership team at Meta. Alexandr Wang, the former CEO of Scale, has been hired to lead the new division in a deal reportedly valued at over $14 billion. Wang officially joined Meta this week after his departure from Scale last week. Reporting to Wang, SSI co-founder Daniel Gross and former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman are poised to co-lead the Meta AI assistant project. Wang is currently meeting with Meta's senior leadership and actively recruiting for the new team, with an official announcement anticipated as early as next week. 5 Must-Have Gadgets for Your Next Beach Holiday to Stay Safe, Cool & Connected
Time of India
2 hours ago
- Time of India
Europeans seek 'digital sovereignty' as US tech firms embrace Trump
At a market stall in Berlin run by charity Topio, volunteers help people who want to purge their phones of the influence of US tech firms. Since Donald Trump 's inauguration, the queue for their services has grown. Interest in European-based digital services has jumped in recent months, data from digital market intelligence company Similarweb shows. More people are looking for e-mail, messaging and even search providers outside the United States. The first months of Trump's second presidency have shaken some Europeans' confidence in their long-time ally, after he signalled his country would step back from its role in Europe 's security and then launched a trade war. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Costco Shoppers Say This Wrinkle Cream Is "Actually Worth It" The Skincare Magazine Undo "It's about the concentration of power in US firms," said Topio's founder Michael Wirths, as his colleague installed on a customer's phone a version of the Android operating system without hooks into the Google ecosystem. Wirths said the type of people coming to the stall had changed: "Before, it was people who knew a lot about data privacy. Now it's people who are politically aware and feel exposed." Live Events Tesla chief Elon Musk, who also owns social media company X, was a leading adviser to the US president before the two fell out, while the bosses of Amazon, Meta and Google-owner Alphabet took prominent spots at Trump's inauguration in January. Discover the stories of your interest Blockchain 5 Stories Cyber-safety 7 Stories Fintech 9 Stories E-comm 9 Stories ML 8 Stories Edtech 6 Stories Days before Trump took office, outgoing president Joe Biden had warned of an oligarchic "tech industrial complex" threatening democracy. Berlin-based search engine Ecosia says it has benefited from some customers' desire to avoid US counterparts like Microsoft's Bing or Google, which dominates web searches and is also the world's biggest email provider. "The worse it gets, the better it is for us," founder Christian Kroll said of Ecosia, whose sales pitch is that it spends its profits on environmental projects. Similarweb data shows the number of queries directed to Ecosia from the European Union has risen 27% year-on-year and the company says it has 1% of the German search engine market. But its 122 million visits from the 27 EU countries in February were dwarfed by 10.3 billion visits to Google, whose parent Alphabet made revenues of about $100 billion from Europe, the Middle East and Africa in 2024 - nearly a third of its $350 billion global turnover. Non-profit Ecosia earned 3.2 million euros ($3.65 million) in April, of which 770,000 euros was spent on planting 1.1 million trees. Google declined to comment for this story. Reuters could not determine whether major US tech companies have lost any market share to local rivals in Europe. Digital sovereignty The search for alternative providers accompanies a debate in Europe about "digital sovereignty" - the idea that reliance on companies from an increasingly isolationist United States is a threat to Europe's economy and security. "Ordinary people, the kind of people who would never have thought it was important they were using an American service are saying, 'hang on!'," said UK-based internet regulation expert Maria Farrell. "My hairdresser was asking me what she should switch to." Use in Europe of Swiss-based ProtonMail rose 11.7% year-on-year to March compared to a year ago, according to Similarweb, while use of Alphabet's Gmail, which has some 70% of the global email market, slipped 1.9%. ProtonMail, which offers both free and paid-for services, said it had seen an increase in users from Europe since Trump's re-election, though it declined to give a number. "My household is definitely disengaging," said British software engineer Ken Tindell, citing weak US data privacy protections as one factor. Trump's vice president JD Vance shocked European leaders in February by accusing them - at a conference usually known for displays of transatlantic unity - of censoring free speech and failing to control immigration. In May, Secretary of State Marco Rubio threatened visa bans for people who "censor" speech by Americans, including on social media, and suggested the policy could target foreign officials regulating US tech companies. US social media companies like Facebook and Instagram parent Meta have said the European Union's Digital Services Act amounts to censorship of their platforms. EU officials say the Act will make the online environment safer by compelling tech giants to tackle illegal content, including hate speech and child sexual abuse material. Greg Nojeim, director of the Security and Surveillance Project at the Center for Democracy & Technology, said Europeans' concerns about the US government accessing their data, whether stored on devices or in the cloud, were justified. Not only does US law permit the government to search devices of anyone entering the country, it can compel disclosure of data that Europeans outside the US store or transmit through US communications service providers, Nojeim said. Mission impossible? Germany's new government is itself making efforts to reduce exposure to US tech, committing in its coalition agreement to make more use of open-source data formats and locally-based cloud infrastructure. Regional governments have gone further - in conservative-run Schleswig-Holstein, on the Danish border, all IT used by the public administration must run on open-source software. Berlin has also paid for Ukraine to access a satellite-internet network operated by France's Eutelsat instead of Musk's Starlink. But with modern life driven by technology, "completely divorcing US tech in a very fundamental way is, I would say, possibly not possible," said Bill Budington of US digital rights nonprofit the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Everything from push notifications to the content delivery networks powering many websites and how internet traffic is routed relies largely on US companies and infrastructure, Budington noted. Both Ecosia and French-based search engine Qwant depend in part on search results provided by Google and Microsoft's Bing, while Ecosia runs on cloud platforms, some hosted by the very same tech giants it promises an escape from. Nevertheless, a group on messaging board Reddit called BuyFromEU has 211,000 members. "Just cancelled my Dropbox and will switch to Proton Drive," read one post. Mastodon, a decentralised social media service developed by German programmer Eugen Rochko, enjoyed a rush of new users two years ago when Musk bought Twitter, later renamed X. But it remains a niche service. Signal, a messaging app run by a US nonprofit foundation, has also seen a surge in installations from Europe. Similarweb's data showed a 7% month-on-month increase in Signal usage in March, while use of Meta's WhatsApp was static. Meta declined to comment for this story. Signal did not respond to an e-mailed request for comment. But this kind of conscious self-organising is unlikely on its own to make a dent in Silicon Valley's European dominance, digital rights activist Robin Berjon told Reuters. "The market is too captured," he said. "Regulation is needed as well."
