Mark Zuckerberg is a strong advocate for wearable technology, particularly Meta's smart glasses, which he claims are the future of tech. He highlights their practicality, sharing an anecdote of taking business calls on a jet ski without the other party realizing it, thanks to the glasses' advanced microphone. The glasses range from $379 to $799 and are integrated with AI features that allow for hands-free navigation. Zuckerberg believes that the existing market of 2 billion eyeglass wearers presents a significant opportunity, comparing their adoption to the transition from flip phones to smartphones. Despite recent financial struggles for Meta, including a $19.2 billion loss in 2025, he remains optimistic about the growth potential of these smart glasses, which he views as crucial for maintaining social presence and enhancing cognitive abilities.

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Mark Zuckerberg takes business calls on a jet ski wearing his $800 Meta glasses—and insists ‘the other person could not tell’

Sydney Lake

By Sydney Lake Sydney Lake

Associate Editor Down Arrow Button Icon

Sydney Lake

By Sydney Lake Sydney Lake

Associate Editor Down Arrow Button Icon

July 5, 2026, 8:03 AM ET

Mark Zuckerberg is sold on the promise of Meta glasses.

Mark Zuckerberg is sold on the promise of Meta glasses.Getty Images—David Paul Morris/Bloomberg

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Mark Zuckerberg firmly believes wearables are the future. He’s so obsessed with them, in fact, he wears his Meta glasses pretty much everywhere.

Why Zuckerberg is so sure about glasses

Zuckerberg’s confidence in the wearables market stems from a simple bet: that nearly 2 billion people who already wear glasses for vision correction represent a ready-made market, he said. Zuckerberg also likens it to the shift from flip phones to smartphones.

“It felt pretty clear that in five years or whatever, all of the flip phones were going to be smartphones, and that’s basically how I feel about glasses today,” he said.

He also argues glasses allow people to stay “present with the people around you” in a way phones don’t, while giving an AI assistant the ability to “see what you see, hear what you hear, talk to you throughout the day.”

Zuckerberg said Meta has been working on the underlying technology since 2014, starting with virtual and augmented reality, and that the company is already planning its 2028 glasses lineup. The smart glasses effort is also part of what he calls building “personal super intelligence.” It’s a vision he contrasts with that of rival AI labs, arguing that a future with “one big AI” everyone uses would be “a bad future, no matter how good the AI is.”

Zuckerberg’s optimism has been consistent, having told analysts last year people without AI glasses could one day be at a “pretty significant cognitive disadvantage.” On Meta’s January earnings call, he said sales of the glasses tripled within the last year and called them “some of the fastest growing consumer electronics in history.” Go to https://techcrunch.com/2026/01/28/mark-zuckerberg-future-smart-glasses/

But Zuckerberg’s obsession with smart glasses isn’t cheap. Meta’s Reality Labs division, which houses the glasses business, posted a $19.2 billion loss in 2025, and the company expects 2026 capital expenditures to hit as much as $145 billion.

“The formula for our company has always been to build experiences that can get to billions of people and focus on monetizing them once you get to scale,” Zuckerberg argued earlier this year.

The glasses have occasionally created awkward moments for Meta’s founder—including in February, when a judge threatened to hold members of Zuckerberg’s entourage in contempt of court for wearing the recording-capable glasses into a no-recording courtroom. But if the jet ski story is any indication, Zuckerberg isn’t bothered by what other people think of his product.

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About the Author

By Sydney LakeAssociate Editor

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Sydney Lake is an associate editor at Fortune, where she writes and edits news for the publication's global news desk.

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