The AI glasses race is heating up

You all recently announced that you're pausing the international rollout. What was the reason for that? Demand has exceeded expectations. For a brand new product, brand new category, it was really hard for us to predict. We're selling them as fast as we make them right now. Revenge of the glass holes? At CES 2026, smart glasses are everywhere, trying to do everything. And today we have the perfect guest to talk about it. Meta's VP of wearables, Alex Himmel. The company with the hottest glasses on their hands out of just about anybody in the tech landscape. This week, Meta announced neural band powered handwriting on any surface. And they even paused their international rollout since they can't keep up with demand for their new display glasses. This week, we get into it all. Let's do it. I just declined a spam phone call that was coming in about a second ago while we were talking. You did? Came in the glasses, used my EMG band to swipe. Did you notice I'm doing that, Alex? Nope. Because I'm present with you guys. And you're connected. And I'm connected. Alex, we are back at CES. I guess you're here a lot more often than I am these days. I haven't been in several years now. A lot more robots, a lot more AI. Yeah. No more booth babes. None. But a lot kind of feels the same in like a comforting way. I like being back in tech media world, rubbing shoulders with a lot of old friends from The Verge and otherwise. Yeah. Taking in the smells. Taking in the many interesting smells throughout Las Vegas. Yeah. We got to do a little show floor walk yesterday and the smell was just insane for me. I don't know. I just can't get over it. Yeah. I mean, you combine tech bros with Nathan's hot dogs and very old bathrooms and it's not the most pleasant place to be. Yeah. We need tech for that, I think. Yeah. I loved seeing that thing that you did a video for. With The Verge, the VR treadmill thing and it looked exactly the same. Yeah. That was a highlight. Some things never change, like VR treadmills. Yeah. Other things do, like automated AI lawnmowers. Oh, man. How are you liking Vegas overall? I mean, you're leaving today, so I'm here all week because I hate myself, but you're in and out, which I think is the way to do it. I think coming to Vegas instead of going to Vegas, it's going to be a lot of fun. Yeah. Coming to Vegas and staying for as long as I am is not advisable. Yeah, not great for my sinuses. Fortunately, I came armed with a bandolier of Simply Saline nasal spray, so I'm doing just fine. Yeah. And I always forget, I mean, I always feel like Vegas is just massive, big Americana giant Mondo burgers that weigh five pounds. But you wouldn't expect the food to be as good as it is here. We had a great dinner. I'm always impressed. Yeah. A great dinner last night at the Wynn with Producer Dave, which was nice to meet Producer Dave in person. And yeah, the food in Vegas is good. Well, what's your favorite part about being here? Playing poker. How do you remember anything you hear from anyone when everybody is drinking for a week straight? Well, this is, so we were talking with a founder of an AI wearable the other day, and I need something that I can just quickly talk into because I'm the guy who like immediately after an interaction at a happy hour, goes over to, you know, his phone and like starts typing what I need to remember. So I have a scratch pad, a running CS scratch pad of juicy tips, remember to connect so and so literally just wrote one just now. Uh, yeah, it's, and it's only decipherable by me, you know, it's your unique shorthand and, and maybe AGI will be able to decipher it one day, but I can guarantee you that no AI would look at my scratch pad from Vegas and know what to do with it. Yeah. As we talk about with Alex or. Just having a look around it for better or worse seems very clear that the future is very much on the record. Everybody is wearing an AI pin. Like I saw a guy wearing applaud little AI note taking pin. I don't know how to know if it's on or not. Uh, there's glasses, there's phones, obviously. Um, I guess we just have to be careful, careful, uh, with all the locker room talk that, uh, usually pervades CES we think plowed uses cloud. I sure hope so that's, that's the ultimate crossover event of the millennium, I think. Yeah, well, we are here in person. I want to shout out Farsight, uh, who gave us this room that we are recording in right now. Shout out to them. It's fun to do these live shows. We want to do more of them this year. I think we had a good experience last year with Google, uh, and, and Harvey from Winston from Harvey. So, uh, yeah, this is fun. And we've got Alex Himmel. On, uh, as we said in the intro who runs wearables for Meta and, you know, uh, there are so many knockoffs of what they're trying to do here. I mean, literally we saw like four and one little corner of the showroom floor yesterday, and he's a good guest, I think, to actually talk about, you know, what's going on in this space because it is seemingly getting hot. I guess I was, I was thinking, uh, how funny it is that it's. Finally happening. I mean, this has been one of those things that has been kind of happening for 10 years now. I mean, back when I was at the verge, I mean, I remember trying out the original Google glass and the use cases from that product are like very literally the same use cases that are in AI glasses today. It can just do it a little bit better with a higher fidelity screen, better design, better battery life, obviously. But yeah, I mean, tried Google glass worked on spectacles. But snap, those have been evolving and pivoting and changing for 10 years. It's definitely, it has to be a bit of an ego bruise, I would say for both Google and snap, like as very, very early investors in this technology to see meta, uh, come in and kind of swoop in and make the thing happen. But I mean, as we talk about on the pod, I mean, really, in my view, the master stroke in a lot of ways was bringing in, uh, Ray Bannon and now Oakley and as Alex tells us, they actually brought. Interesting constraints into the equation that a tech company wouldn't necessarily think about to ensure that their brand is represented well. And, you know, conversely, that people would actually want to wear the things and now they can't make enough of them. Yeah. Um, well on your Google and snap point, the timing is interesting for this conversation because both of them are coming back with glasses this year. So snap will have the consumer spectacles relaunched. This year, they're very optimistic about it. I was catching up with some of them the other day. Um, that's coming. Google is going to relaunch glass and I think call it glass. I mean, they should, they should. Yeah. I think they think that enough time has passed. Retake glass hole. Time has healed all wounds, but at the same time, the bar for calling it that and doing it again is so high. Cause if you fail again, it's like, do you wait 20 years now to try again? Uh, but yeah, I mean, medicine, the lead right now, it's a, it's a fast growing, but still. I mean, it's a relatively small category. It's like low, I think single digit millions units a year now, but that's, I mean, it's a lot more than it was and everyone is seeing that early growth and going, oh, we're going to like get back into this. I, I did not think that AI was going to be the thing that made glasses work. Um, I guess it's just one of those things where like you add up all the use cases and at some point it becomes interesting, you know? Uh, I think what is crazy though, is that between. Meta. Google, um, and snap, they all actually have different like input modalities, you know, like meta is focusing on the neural band and the handwriting snap, I think is focused on more like using your hands to, to pluck things out of the air. More similar to, to Apple vision pro. I'm not sure if we know what modality Google is going to, I imagine it will be hand tracking and voice. I mean, that's the thing that it has that no one else has is the band and you got to try it for the first time yesterday. The haptics. The whole experience. It's very unique. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, to be totally honest, going beyond how impressive it is, it definitely wasn't perfect, which of course, like it's not perfect. It also wasn't trained for you. So you were using Mina's and you have to like program it to, you have to do like an initial onboarding. Oh, interesting. Oh, so at that point, like what level of accuracy. So when I did it and they onboarded me properly, it was insanely accurate. Yeah. Yeah. I don't. I feel a lot of conviction that that is necessarily the thing, but I could be wrong. It's not going to be mind control. We'll see. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, what else are you going to do anything else in Vegas before you leave? You got a flight in a few hours. Are you going to try to hit some slots? You know, I played the, the Genghis Khan slots last night, lost $3 over the course of three minutes and then I retired. Yeah. I'm not much of a gambler for better or for worse, probably for better. I mean, it's funny. I expected it to be more of like a candy crush type experience where they get you some early wins so that you're hooked and then they ramp down the odds as you get more hooked. But I don't think they're doing any of that stuff now. You know what I'm saying? Like I was like, oh, I figured that the predatory ness of it. Would be as bad as all of the other predatory products that we use these days, but it's still beautifully stuck in the past of just like. Like, hit the button, that's it. I mean, the predatory aspect is you can smoke indoors and get free drinks. And get fucking massages. And massages. That was the funniest thing. So we're watching Alex play poker with all the high rollers last night. And dudes are in the corner, like, getting body massages, getting ready to, I don't know, get back on the table. No, you do that while you play. Well, some of them, we're doing it while playing. And, yeah, that's peak civilization right there. Vegas is just consumerism and capitalism to the extreme. I love it. That's what makes it, I think, even more mystifying, that it isn't really leveraging a lot of the stuff that we now know is the best at hooking people. Yeah. You know? It's still old-fashioned in that way. Yeah. Well, the only thing besides poker is all the 90s rappers who are performing this week. That's what I'm looking forward to. So I'll be seeing Public Enemy tonight at the Yahoo party. And Snoop Dogg was at your former employer's party the other day. And Gwen Stefani last night at Lenovo, right? There's nothing better. Speaking of my former employer, there's a story that I probably shouldn't say, but I will because it was so funny. We were here for the Snapchat sales off-site years ago. Oh, yeah. And this was back when geo filters were super popping. Do you remember this? Yeah. And so the bar, restaurant, nightclub that we rented out, at least part of it, for the big snap party, they had a geo filter, you know? And I think they had bought it. And there was an employee who couldn't get on stage with some of the other employees that were already on stage trying to use their privilege as, you know, renting out the club to go party next to the DJ. And they were so mad that they went back to their room. And pulled the geo filter. And got in very, very big trouble over that. I mean, just what a way to go, right? Man, and that's an early taste of the power of augmented reality. And someone like Himmel who will be able to theoretically, I mean, I'm sure Meta has much better guardrails in place to keep someone from doing something like that. But it's a lot of power to hand to a company when it's not even just a phone. It's a lot of power to hand to a company when it's not even just a phone. It's not just a phone filter, but it's on your face, right? Yeah, I mean, it's like reality trolling, you know? I mean, we also had a geo filter, speaking of Facebook. We had a geo filter back in the old days over Facebook headquarters. I remember that. That was so good. And it was the ghost pointing and laughing at you. That's right. And I'm sure that pissed off a lot of folks. Because Facebookers are not, they're known for a lot of things, probably not their sense of humor. And so I think that, I think that probably pissed off a lot of people. Well, we shouldn't shit on Facebook too much when their guest is coming. But you're right. I would say they're not known for their humor. They're known for ruthless execution at scale. Yeah, yeah. And I think that's what they're doing here at CES. Yeah, everybody has their strengths. Yeah. It is fascinating to watch, though. I feel like Facebook has been trying to crack new consumer products and apps for such a long time. And they've just got to be over the moon that they see that. They seem to have a hit on their hands. Yeah, they can't make enough. They haven't historically been known for creating net new things. You know, it's usually been through acquisitions or I don't want to say copying, but ruthless execution. Yes. And they're damn good at it. Yes. Well, with that, we'll bring him on here and get going. Sounds good. Let's do it. Alex, how was your tour of the show floor yesterday? It's pretty great. It took a while. It's a very massive show floor. Walking around. I want to check out not just the stuff that we work on, but everything else that's happening in the industry. It was cool. There was a lot of interesting stuff. Nothing unexpected. It was kind of the trends that I thought I'd see. You saw wearables, AI, robotics, a number of other things. The John Deere booth, maybe, was something I hadn't expected. That was especially cool. It was fun. It was fun to check out. You were saying before we were starting rolling that you gave your data for a hat, that it was worth it. It's a good hat. I really like hats. I did not wear a hat today because my wife encouraged me to dress better for CES. But yes, if you give your credentials to the John Deere booth, you get the green hat, which I am very excited to start wearing. Alex likes hats. Yeah, I do. How nauseating did you find the show floor on a scale of one to like, I need to take a step outside? The smell's really bad, actually. Yeah. It's just hard to get around. So you have to use the app. It doesn't really load well. And there's no printed material that I could find. And so I kept walking in circles because I couldn't really figure out where I was going. Maybe that's why it took 30 minutes. A good use case for AI. A phenomenal use case for AR, one would say. A phenomenal use case for AR. But the data has to be loaded to know where you're going. Maybe next year? The CES app in the glasses next year. That's a good idea. I mean, I feel like the closest thing it reminds me of is like a video game with like a really bad mini map that confuses you more than it actually helps and you end up going the wrong direction. You can't find anything. But I guess that's all of Vegas, right? It's like kind of deliberate. They want you to see everything and buy your way out as you walk down the street. Anywhere you go. So I guess it's probably deliberate. You were enjoying all the taglines. Let's see, yes, as well. You were, yeah. Yeah. Ellis is a tagline guy. And there were some great ones. Yeah, I spend a lot of my time writing taglines. I think, you know, the GOAT, TDK, in everything, better. Oh, I like that. The Bosch one was good. I also like Paxini, empowering, sensation. And, of course, we have Bosch. What is that product? It is a humanoid robot that, I guess, empowers sensation. You take that whatever way you want to take that. And it was right next to the body friend booth as well, which you can also imagine what that is. And see how the holidays just passed us. The gift opportunity is just tremendous. And, of course, Bosch. That was the best one. The more you Bosch, the more you feel like a Bosch. These are gold. Do you guys have a tagline? You mean meta or wearables? Yeah, yeah, just for the. So, we probably need to do a better job of popularizing this, but we've always talked about present yet connected when we do wearables, so you're not kind of down in a screen, but you're able to be present with the people around you, but still connected. You did? Yeah. Wow. Did you notice that? Did you notice I'm doing that, Ellis? Nope. Wow. Yeah, I'm connected. You could always just go with Sustainable Infrastructure for Intelligent Society. It is already taken, but I think you guys have more lawyers than they do. If you wanted to snag that. Or you could go with AI Solution Universe. Okay. Which of these is. Metaverse. AI Solution Metaverse. Oh, wait. Here's actually the best one. All dreams in one dream. With an E at the end of the second dream. Do you guys have a tagline for the pod? The tech industry's inside conversation. Yeah. Which, I don't know. Do we like that? It could be better, I think. That's awesome. It could speak to. I mean, we could always roll with supporting today's normal, taking the lead for tomorrow's normal, which was plastered on the side of like a Cybertruck. Wow. Yeah. It's impossible to know what anyone's doing here. It's my tagline. Yeah. Yeah. You guys don't have a booth, right? You're not like. You're off the. We don't have a booth. Yeah. No. We have. You just have 14 companies trying to copy you on the show floor. Yeah. As they say, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and we have definitely seen a lot of glasses that look and feel similar to the ones that we have on the market. I don't think they. They don't look as good. They don't perform as well, but there's a lot of products that we see. We did a couple glasses demos. You want to talk about that? Yeah. They will do their best to hide the differences, because I feel like at the Consumer Electronics Show, it's always, I would think, been more about hardware than software. Yeah. So, we stopped by all these booths, and the glasses ostensibly look similar, but then you look at all their brochures and everything, and you don't see any of the user interface, and you're like, that seems like a red flag. Because it sucks. That they're not showing any of the user interface, and you guys and others are working on things like live translation and this and that, and we went to one booth that was live translation, like, oh, give this a go, and it was like little green laser writing. Which is, like, up here somewhere, like, I thought I was going crazy. I'm like, oh, I see. Okay. They're not there yet. I think for me, what it showed is it's very hard to do general purpose computing in this form factor, and everyone's doing, like, super niche things. There's a handful of companies, but you all and a couple others that can actually do general purpose, because it's so expensive, and it's so difficult to pack everything into the glasses, right? Yeah. I mean, it's not just, people do green. You do a monochrome. because you can do a smaller projector if you just do one color instead of RGB. And green is the most efficient color, so it's the easiest to make the brightest without using a lot of power. But when we designed the MetaRay band displays that I'm wearing, our idea was you need to be able to see a message. So if a message comes in, and when you get a message, a lot of times it's a photo or a video. And seeing that in kind of a monochrome green upside felt like it would be a very dissatisfying way to see a message come in. So that drove a lot of the requirements for what we did. Speaking of that, has Zuck WhatsAppped you since this conversation started? Not yet. You just said you declined a spam call earlier. Have you gotten any other good notifications? In the last five minutes? No, it's been quiet. That's good. Well, I mean, there is a world in the future where you are both live streaming to your boss while they are messaging you about what you're saying and editing your teleprompter live, striking out words that they don't like. And whatnot. Don't give Zuck ideas. Well, yeah, I mean, I'm taking mental notes. I mean, not just the taglines, but also the product ideas. But I think one of the observations we had is that, you know, inspired by COVID, we spent a lot of time in Zoom calls. And when you're on a Zoom call, typically you also have a message thread with the people in the meeting while it's happening to kind of augment the experience so you can have kind of back channels or side channels. And one of the ideas with these glasses was, hey, if I'm talking to you guys physically, it's an easy way to pass notes while in the meeting. And so that, you know, we announced handwriting yesterday. So that's a way to efficiently, discreetly, quietly respond to a message or write a message while you're present with other people. I got to try handwriting with you back at Connect, and it was a very cool demo. Yeah. I'm going to stick with T9 over here. Do you guys remember that? Of course. T9 feels so damn mad. It's so magical. Bring it back. We actually prototyped it. We were, I mean, we have tried every concept. And going from an idea to does it really work for a lot of people and is it efficient, is it usable, there's a lot that seems like a good idea and fails along the way or feels like a bad idea and ends up being awesome. T9 was one of the ideas. I mean, you can imagine with a, because basically you need a three-by-three grid, right, to be able to do T9. At EMG, so we had, we're using the neural band to try to, to try to do that, you know, different targets. And we got pretty far with it. It just didn't feel as promising or as fast. You couldn't hit the words per, like we're doing 30 words per minute with handwriting. That's what Mark did on stage when he was saying something, messaging another in real time at Connect. So 30 words per minute is pretty good. And I think we couldn't get that with T9. What were you with T9? How fast were you? I'm not sure. But I was, I was texting my first girlfriend very fast on T9, rest assured. Oh, I mean, I believe it. You got to try the glasses for the first time yesterday. I did. Yeah. I mean, speaking of the user interface, I mean, it, it really was shocking to go from using this to the green laser on the floor. I mean, how, how many years ahead do you guys feel like you are from some of the others that you might see out there? I mean, it's hard to say. I, uh, it's, it's, it's hard to measure and, you know, we're not, we're not trying to spend too much time. We're not trying to obsess over what other people are doing because we've got a pretty, we've got a roadmap that we're really excited about. So we're, we're mostly focused on just trying to bring everything that we've been working on to market. But I think, I mean, I think it's pretty well known that a lot of companies tried glasses and it didn't work out as well as they had hoped us included. I think our first generation Ray-Ban stories did not go as well as we'd hoped it would. And a lot of companies kind of retreated and divested from the space. We doubled down at the same time. And so when we had all these, and we, you know, we launched five devices in the last half, we launched the Oakley MetaHouse and the Oakley Meta Vanguard, the Meta Ray-Ban displays, the Meta NeuralBand and the, uh, new Ray-Ban meta glasses. And a lot of people was like, wow, you guys like only a year after the Ray-Ban betas, you had these display glasses. Like we've been working on those since COVID. Like that was, that was a multi-year project that we greenlit a long time. It took a long time to build a display that was what we thought at a level that productized to build the interface, to make the NeuralBand ready to ship and be usable just out of the box for people. So. There's a lot more of that coming. You know, th those are investments that we put in a long time ago. You've seen the Orion prototype, which is the North star of where we're trying to get to. We're still working on a productizing, a version of that, a number of things in between. We believe people want different brands and styles that suit them. You'll see a lot of that coming. You know, we've got a pretty big roadmap that's on the way. And speaking of the brands, um, I think working with Ray-Ban and Oakley were very smart decisions. Um, were you guys surprised by. How well that strategy worked? Cause I think, you know, like I was at Snapchat for several years and I think every tech company would like to think that they could do it better, that they have taste. We had some glasses designers there that came from some big glasses companies, and you still end up with something that still kind of feels wacky and draws too much attention to itself. Those original spectacles like launch though. That was, that was a great launch. I mean the vending machine and all that. It was. Yeah. We can talk about that more if you want, but it's like, yeah, maybe we should just let Ray-Ban do it, you know, it's like, they do know what they're doing here and Oakley as well. But I mean, were you, were you guys surprised by how much the designs resonated or, uh, did it feel like, yep, this is what we thought would happen. I mean, the Ray-Ban Wayfarer is like the most iconic, bestselling style of glasses, brand and style of glasses in the world. And so we're pretty confident that that would give us our best chance of success. I mean, we're Essel Oil Exotica. Who's the partner? We've gone deep with their great, I'd say that there's maybe two aspects to it. Um, well first the Orion prototype that you saw and everything we're doing there, that's very much a tech first use case. First, like we had an idea of what we wanted them to be able to do, and we were putting tech in them to enable that in contrast, the Ray-Ban meta glasses, we put a real limit on the industrial design. Like it couldn't be more than 50 grams. It had to be a shape and style that was truly authentic to the Wayfarer, like a lot of constraints on it. And one of. One of the benefits of working with, um, our partners that Essel Oil Exotica, who we talked to daily and are awesome is they just say no to things that I think we'd compromise on if it was just us doing it where, you know, go in, it's like, ah, it's just a millimeter. It's just a Graham, like still looks similar to me. And they're just, nope, that's not going to work. I mean, that's awesome. I mean, you need someone to say no when it comes to the aesthetic or how something might appear in culture. And I'm sure, I mean, constraints are the best. You know, when you're making stuff like this and, uh, yeah, it's definitely, it's definitely come a long way. I mean, what, what was like the video capture and resolution of the original stories versus, you know, what you have today? Uh, well, we now have 3k resolution. I mean, the, the way we've measured it is we basically benchmark it against phones and we look critically at how it shows up on Instagram. Uh, so it's, I mean, for us, see, there's another criteria that's actually realistic. Yeah. Whereas I think if you walk the floors. The consumer electronics show, people just say, oh, why not? Why isn't it eight K it's like, well, there are trade-offs and we do have a sense of where this, uh, imagery is actually going to appear. Right. And so bringing in that constraint is, is helpful. Yeah. I just wanted to be shareable. Yeah. If it's something that looks good enough to share, then we feel like we've done our job. Yeah. I'm so curious now that you've been a few months into having the display glasses out in the world. What have you guys learned? What, what is, what is the early usage like? Uh, well, some of the use cases that are possible in the, uh, display, the Rayman Meta glasses we're seeing used a lot more. So for example, messaging, I think it's used something like five X or so, which is, it's probably obvious when you think about it, instead of listening to a message in your ear, you can read it, uh, in a display, you know, you can read things a lot faster and listen to them. And it's also discreet. And you're saying that is the most used feature of the glasses messaging. It's the biggest Delta from one pair to the other. Okay. So basically think of, um, what is net new possible with the display? And that's one that, and then we have, um, teleprompter and, uh, handwriting with the neural band we announced yesterday and we'll be announcing more things that's possible with the display. Uh, you'll see it coming in the next few months. You could be using the teleprompter right now. I could be. Yeah. It's very discreet. Yeah. I mean, that's pretty big decision. I feel like, and obviously consumers will be the judge of, of what's going on. What's good and what isn't, but you know, you're essentially creating a new operating system. And I mean, one of my biggest issues with iOS is that notifications have become so abused, so prevalent, so distracting, uh, and, and disruptive. And I mean, you know, it's, it's like, if I were you, that would be one of my top priorities is to use AI or whatever you need to do to make sure a spam call never hits your eyeball, you know, so that you don't even have to dismiss it. Like what type of priorities are? Going into the, the OS as you guys, as you guys build it. Yeah. So we have the benefit of starting from scratch, uh, with what is a notification. I mean, with the glasses, you have a setting where it's up to you if you want it to wake the display when a notification comes in. And then we've started with a short list of notifications that can show up in your view. So WhatsApp is one example, even there, we're trying to dial it a little bit more than it is, you know, we've tried to have simple rules, like if it's WhatsApp. And you probably have your highest priority contacts in there. And then you can have a list of contacts that you want to prioritize. Even then, you know, you can get a pretty low priority notification from a high priority person. Yeah. Uh, like usually what my wife sends me is really, really, really important. And so I do want that to come in, but every once in a while, it's just, you know, hi. I mean, that does seem like a perfect thing for AI to hopefully help tackle. I mean, I, I always felt like I wanted, uh, an API inside of iOS or Android. or Android that allowed you to specify important people across any app, you know, and have it be unified in some way. But I think you're right is that it really often is not always perfect, the best predictor. Certainly the Apple intelligence summaries are not, have no sense of humor and are probably not properly conveying the urgency of things. But yeah, I think there's some good ideas there. But that's a lot of pressure, right? To like, I mean, that's a pretty big editorial judgment. I guess providing users the options is always a good, always a good approach. But yeah, the combination, I think, you see, phones have started to try to do it where they try to look at your calendar and say, hey, do you have a meeting right now? If so, do you want to turn it into a silent mode? I think similar things from wearables where you're trying to understand the context that the person is in. Am I in the middle of talking, you know, when something comes in? Oh, that's a great one. I never even thought about that. If you're in the middle of talking, maybe don't show a notification. That's fantastic. I love it. Yeah. What about other form factors? You guys bought Limitless, that pendant. Are you thinking about things beyond glasses in the band? There's so many AI wearables here at CS doing note-taking or whatever. Some of them are dumber than others, but I like the whole category because it's ambient AI that you can use in an easier way than a phone. And maybe even the glasses in some cases. We were hanging out with Mina, the founder of Sandbar, which is doing a really cool ring. He used to be at Control F. Yes, exactly. He worked on the whole band. Exactly. So yeah, how are you guys thinking about that? The explosion of AI wearables and bringing the Limitless team on and all that? I think a few things. So we really believe in familiar form factors. And so I think people have already chosen what is comfortable to wear and what they have reason to wear. And so we look at everyone I know. I can't think of a single person, even my kids, who does not have a pair of glasses or sunglasses that they wear. It's one of the reasons why we like glasses. That and they're able to pick up the context of what you're seeing and what you're hearing. And if you really want to do, to render something that someone can easily read, glasses are great. People also wear things on their wrists. That's pretty common. So that's why we've got the Neural Band. We announced a partnership with Garmin where that works with the Oakley Metaglasses. The Limitless team, and then we've also tried just about everything in our research that you can imagine. And I think part of this is we think AI wearables, AI-powered wearables will be a major thing. And a lot of people are going to wear glasses and a lot of people are going to wear devices on their wrists, but not everyone. And so if we want to make sure we can meet everyone wherever they are, it's worth considering other form factors. Unlimitless, Dan Stroker is the CEO. I mean, I think they just had a really aligned vision with what we were trying to build. And so it's a small team, a really great team, Dan, I've known for a while, that we were excited to bring on board and help build towards the vision we have. We were talking about this with Mina actually yesterday, that to your point about the things that people wear on their bodies, rings may actually be the thing that people wear, the most people wear on a daily basis. Does the ring form factor mean anything significant for you as you guys are looking at different, do you think that that's meaningful, I guess? I think the ring is very interesting. You see it and you see a lot of companies investigating this space. I mean, there's some challenges with it, limited battery size, limited capabilities in a device that size. The other thing is, I think people are pretty mixed on whether they find it comfortable to wear or not. I noticed you have one on your. Yeah, I've got the Aura. You had it and then you got rid of it, right? My Aura died after two years and I had had enough of. Feeling even guiltier about my hangovers. That became a very negative feature. I haven't even checked it this week. I refuse to check my Aura this week. I'm like, I wake up and feel like shit and it's like, Ellis, you have a 42 out of 100. And I'm like, well, I feel worse now, now that I know that information. Well, those are personal decisions, how much self-improvement you want to invest in. But I think form factor wise, we also just. I mean, the thing about a ring is, most people only wear one and that's dependent on culture. And yeah, I've seen some people replace their wedding ring with a smart ring. That's a move. That's a move. And I'm not. That's not a move. I'm ready to make. It's a choice. But that's a choice. And then if you don't wear it there, it's like which finger on which hand. Yeah. And I think sometimes it'll get in the way. A lot of the usage I've seen is more at night, similar to the use case you're talking about, where you're trying to improve your sleep, your recovery, and wake up more prepared to do things. So I think the ring is interesting. I don't think it will be as widely used as something like glasses or something on your wrist, just based on comfort. Yeah. I mean, I guess watches are the other one, right? That so many people wear. And I believe I'm not an Apple Watch person because I'm going to hold on to my analog watches till I die. But I believe if you hold it up to. You do that motion, you could engage its listening mode. Obviously, you could do Hey Siri as well. But yeah, there are definitely a lot of options. But I'm. I'm curious, though. I feel like you've been in tech long enough to remember, hopefully, when people were afraid that Google was going to be outsourcing all of your memory or outsourcing all of your thinking to the cloud. Now with the glasses, I believe you have kids? We have ages six and nine. Six and nine. We have this opportunity to invent this future for them. Do you worry at all about that? Obviously, there are benefits to having the tool and having things in front of your eyes. Maybe also there's this idea that everything is instant gratification. I know that's something that we wrestle with as parents constantly. How are you thinking about that? Well, I think one of the trends I've seen here is, yes, I've been here, is I think compared to last year, everyone feels like they're really embracing AI. It just feels like we've kind of passed this threshold where, okay, clearly it's going to be used in various ways, whether that's. At work or personally. The vibe I've gotten is people are looking at, okay, how am I going to use this? And how am I going to make sure that it's helpful and isn't making things harder and isn't getting in the way? My kids, they both have smartwatches. I just got my six-year-old son a Garmin Bounce 2, which is connected for Christmas. He does 20,000 steps a day. His little feet don't stop moving. He's a grown boy. He's a grown boy. Loves playing football. He calls me on it and he texts me with it and he can only contact his two parents. And so it feels pretty good. So I think in a controlled way, it feels very positive. I think it's something that we're all going to have to lean into is like, how is this stuff used? One of the trends that we've seen is, that we were talking about a bunch yesterday, is it's a lot of cognitive overload and a lot of work for people right now to prompt the AI. You really have to think hard to get the response you want, which feels. Opposite. Like the opposite of what it should be. And so how we devise an interface that's more like low effort for people. Proactive. Yeah. Like we've partnered with Disney to have the glasses in the Disney parks. And so they help you to think of what you'd want if you're at a Disney park and it can help you like find the next ride. We were looking at ideas like, hey, they can let you know if there's a short line somewhere else. And if you think about how that would work, like you don't want to constantly say to your glasses, hey, could you please tell me if there's a short line somewhere right now? But if they knew that and said, hey, the short line detected at a ride you're usually interested to, do you want directions to that right now? And so stuff like that, I think is pretty interesting where it's not really like, it's not the risk you were talking about, which is outsourcing your memory and all that. But it's like, how can we build stuff that understands who you are, what you're trying to do and makes it just easier to get around? And that's kind of that present yet connected idea. I would imagine one of the challenges, and we face this at Snap as well, being an advertising business, is that there are always people internally with fun ideas about how brands could get involved. And I feel like you guys have been tactful so far with the partnerships and the integrations, but there is certainly a world that's possible in the future where we are surrounded by even more AR ads and billboards. I mean, Alex, you spend a lot of money on this. You got to make money on these glasses at some point, right? It's ads. That's the way, I mean, that's the way this makes sense at scale, right? Well, I think the most, so one, we sell the glasses, you do pay for them. That's right. There's a revenue stream there. Second is, I think the most obvious software revenue source after that is subscriptions. People are very, we all pay for the AI assistance that we have right now. At some point, I'd imagine, a version of ads being something that we would consider, but you'd have to do it in a way that felt non-intrusive and additive to the experience. I mean, you see a number of AI companies looking at ways to integrate ads into their products right now. I mean, I worked on ads for a number of years at Meta, and I think the way we used to think about it is people don't hate ads, they hate bad ads. And so if you get something that's really relevant to you in the moment, then it's a very positive experience. If you get something that feels like spam that's irrelevant, it's a horrible experience. And so making that really optimized, obviously in a privacy-first, user-controlled way. But that's not something we're thinking about right now. Right now, we're trying to get advice that sells well. And we do imagine some features in AI eventually being something you'll pay for. It costs a lot to run on the server, so it could be a revenue stream. A reporter-y question on the display glasses before. You're queuing up a good thing we wanted to talk about. But you all recently announced that you're pausing the international rollout for the display glasses because you can't make enough, apparently. I'm wondering, is that because you just way undershot your initial shipment volume that you were going to make and people are buying them more? What was the reason for that, pausing that? We have a – it's just been hard to make enough to meet demand. It's probably hard to even model what the demand will be for something like that, right? For a brand-new product, brand-new category, it was really hard for us to predict. And – We just – we're selling them as fast as we make them right now. And rather than – you know, we've got a set of retail partners. Right now, you can buy them in a select set of Eslore sunglasses and Ray-Ban stores, Metalab, as well as Best Buy. There's one here at the Wynn in Vegas I saw, too. There's two. There's one on the first floor and the second floor. Oh, okay. Yeah, so those are our two. We just opened the one on the first floor at the Wynn, which we're really excited about. I think it's a really good experience when you're in there. Matt Jacobson, who's a legend. Zip Meadow has been here. I think he was the eighth hire that we made. He's been driving that, and it's pretty exciting to see that. But anyway, we wanted to make sure that those stores had inventory before we expanded to more stores. Got it. I guess that's a good problem to have, that you can't make enough. It's also bad. It's like it's good and bad. It's a gift and a curse. You know, you think you want it. You think you want it until you're there, and you're letting people down who want to buy the product. It's damned if you do, damned if you don't, right? Better than making way too many spectacles. The story we all know. Yeah. On the ads piece, you queued it up for us nicely. You are a Facebook meta vets. You've been there for, what, 16 years? I'll be 17 this year. I think you and I actually first met in New York for like a Facebook pages launch. This was like 2016 or something? We were launching a jobs product. It was jobs. You were working at Cheddar. Yes. Cheddar cheese, baby. Let's just pivot the entire conversation to the fact that Alex worked at a company called Cheddar. A place called Cheddar. Yeah. Thank you. Add that to your tagline. I'd rather not. Extra cheesy. I'd rather not. Yeah. And scaling the ads business like you did back in the day versus scaling hardware, I imagine it's very different. Software versus hardware really makes your head explode. What has that been like? I mean, you're several years now into this job, but I think Mark has this tendency to put people who have helped build things in the company in new areas and let them try new things. And your boss is another good example of that. Is there anything from the ads era that translates to this, or is it all new? We've often thought people could learn new spaces and could ramp up. And a lot of us who worked on ads, Boz included, didn't know anything about ads before we started working on it and had to learn quickly, talk to the right people, understand the industry. Transition to hardware, I had no experience whatsoever. Other than I was an avid wearables wearer. I'm a long-distance runner. I've been wearing wearables since I was in high school. At this point, though, I've been working on wearables for six years. I'm now an industry veteran. Yeah, you are. It's hard to find some of the industry that's been working on it that long. But yeah, traditionally, people have moved on, learned new spaces, and I think it's made the company a lot stronger and more agile to be able to ramp quickly. Yeah, I know you've also seen a lot of the different eras of Facebook. Meta, leadership, and Zuck, and I know he's been pretty involved in this stuff. How do you feel like his product instincts have evolved as you've seen them over time? He WhatsApps you product stuff constantly, right? You were telling me that in September. When you think about when I say people at Meta learn new spaces quickly, I think Mark would be first in the list of people who ramp up on spaces quickly. You'd be surprised at the breadth and depth that he will go into in any product area that Meta is working on. Actually, that's not fair. Also, areas that Meta is not actively working on. And he's been very involved in React Labs from the start. And I'd say that when everyone else backed out of the category and we doubled down, a lot of that was Mark's conviction that he really thought this was going to be a space that mattered. And being the founder, being the CEO, I think that was the thing that allowed us to be as invested as we have been. And it does feel like this year, the industry is proving the thesis out. Google's going to launch Glass. There's going to be more competition. Everyone's seeing the early volume that you guys are having selling the Glasses and going, okay, this is a category now. It's like 10 years later, right? I mean, it's finally happening. It feels like. Yeah, I mean, we're growing by multiples in sales year over year, continue to. So we're seeing the growth. I think AI is what's enabling everyone to think that, hey, this category could take off faster. We used to think you needed a big display in the Glasses to be a next platform. I think AI will. I think AI will allow that to be faster, and people are seeing it. With the limited time we have left, Alex, I heard you, and this is something I amazingly did not know about you, you have a meat slicer. I do. And you were a sandwich aficionado in a prior life, and I would love to know about your meat slicer and what sandwiches you've been working on lately. Well, from New York. I grew up in New York. I grew up working in a deli in New York. I've always said that's the best job I've ever had, which now I'm trying not to say because I love working at Wearables. Yeah. You know, it's up there. Yeah. And as we're rolling out new AI features, I did buy a meat slicer for my house. I make sandwiches for the kids to take to school at their lunch. And it's been 20 years, and I had forgotten different settings you'd want, whether you're slicing turkey or tomatoes or iceberg lettuce on there, cheese. And I had to turn on a live AI session on the Glasses, and that's one of the times I've used live AI, which is it's not a huge feature yet, but it's a glimpse into the future. It's a great feature of where we think AI is going on Wearables, where you're in a session where the AI can perpetually see what you're seeing and interact with you without having to say the wake word over and over. So the AI helped me get back into it. I also had a lot of skill going into it. I mean, I got everything. I got parchment paper to wrap the sandwiches. I got a whole setup at home. Wow. What's your go-to? Your go-to, just you go back to it every time. I usually make turkey sandwiches. They're the best when you – you've got to roast your own turkey, though. You've got to roast it. You roast your own turkey? You buy – okay. Do you have time for this? You buy – you just throw it in the oven. It's a three-hour, three hours and 20 minutes. You throw it in there. You get a boneless turkey breast, and then that lasts for a week. You throw it in the fridge, so you're pretty set up. It's pretty great. You get home after a long day. I'm sure you guys have some longer days. Five minutes later, I've got a fresh sandwich that's coming straight off a meat slicer with – Wow. I mean, it's hard not to be smiling after a day. Yeah. That and a beer, and it's like pretty great wind down of the day. That's great. Speaking of daily habits, I mean, do you imagine that the glasses are something that you take off when you go to bed, and when you wake up, you put them right back on? Or do you think of it more like situational? I work on wearables, so I'm a little bit biased. I was just looking at my end-of-year stats. I've used 21 different devices. I've talked on the phone with my glasses for over 10,000 minutes. I've taken over 1,000 captures, done over 1,000 AI prompts. So that's generally my day-to-day, but I'm also – So kind of on the bleeding edge of it. I don't know. I think that you'll see – Right now, we see people using our glasses days a week, not every day. More usage on the weekends if it's sunglasses or if you're driving a car. I think one of the things you'll see more and more of is glasses being for optical users, so people who already are wearing prescription glasses like you, Alex, where I think we'll see more usage. They're helping you see in addition to providing the functionality. But you're not going to wear them when you're asleep. There are going to be certain activities that you'll do where you won't be wearing them. So I think we'll see them used more and more, but we'll see if we get to that full day. Alex, thanks for doing this. Thank you. We'll let you get off to your next thing here. It's been great hanging out. Yeah. Thanks for hanging. That's it for this week's show. Straight to your ears from Las Vegas. Don't forget to like, subscribe everywhere you get your podcasts. We've got a website, access.show. And you can find us in video at AccessPod on YouTube. And if you like this episode, leave a five-star review, please, or leave a thumbs up and share it with a friend. It really helps. You can find me at Hamburger on Twitter and at meaning.company for all your startup storytelling needs. And you can find my newsletter at sources.news, which is now sending four days a week. Hear that? 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