Ray-Ban maker EssilorLuxottica says Meta smart glasses are boosting growth

Ray-Ban maker EssilorLuxottica says Meta smart glasses are boosting growth


Meta Ray-Ban Gen 2 AI glasses during the Meta Connect event in Menlo Park, California, US, on Wednesday, Sept. 17, 2025.

David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

EssilorLuxottica said a healthy amount of its revenue growth in the third quarter was due to its partnership with Meta, primarily from its Ray-Ban brand, to develop and sell smart glasses.

“Clearly there is a lift coming from Ray-Ban Meta wearables as a product category,” CFO Stefano Grassi said on the company’s third-quarter earnings call.

The European eyewear company said sales in in the quarter grew 11.7% year-over-year to 6.9 billion euros (about $8 billion) from 6.44 billion euros a year earlier. Of that growth, more than 4 percentage points came from wearables, which includes the Meta products, the company said.

In 2019, Meta and Luxottica inked a deal for Ray-Ban Meta branded smart glasses. Most recently, Luxottica’s Oakley brand has joined the partnership, with the debut in June of the Oakley Meta HSTN smart glasses. The companies are also working on a version of the smart glasses to be released under the Prada brand, CNBC reported in June.

Luxottica, which also oversees several popular brands like Vogue Eyewear and Persol, has been heavily pushing internet-connected glasses that work with Meta’s AI-powered digital assistant. The technology allows users to play music, take photos and perform other actions similar to how they would use smartphones.

“We believe that glasses will be the future,” Grassi said, adding that the wearables business is profitable. “Glasses will materially replace most of the functionality that today we have embedded into our phones.”

Grassi’s statement echoes sentiments expressed by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who said in July that “Personal devices like glasses that understand our context because they can see what we see, hear what we hear, and interact with us throughout the day will become our primary computing devices.”

A couple weeks into the fourth quarter, Grassi said he has “a good degree of optimism” for the period, in part because of the rollout of “all the new products that have been recently presented at the Meta Connect,” which will “all play a role in our fourth-quarter profile.”

At the Connect event in September, Zuckerberg revealed the $799 Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses, which have a small digital display that can be manipulated with an accompanying wristband powered by neural technology.

The company also unveiled new smart glasses, including the $499 Oakley Meta Vanguard glasses and the $379 Ray-Ban Meta (Gen 2) glasses.

Grassi said that Luxottica’s sales growth in North America in the third quarter had more to do with the Ray-Ban Meta glasses than the effects of tariffs, which led to higher prices for its products.

He said the company will be able to reach the 10 million unit capacity that it had originally planned to hit by the end of 2026 earlier than anticipated.

“The overall ecosystem of wearables is going to bring not only revenue associated with the hardware but also the revenue associated with lenses” and over time from services tied to AI.

EssilorLuxottica shares rose 2.4% on Thursday.

Meta isn’t the only tech giant getting into the burgeoning smart glasses market.

Alphabet announced in May a $150 million partnership with Warby Parker to develop smart glasses powered by Google’s Gemini AI digital assistant, while China’s Alibaba unveiled its smart glasses in July that utilize its Quark AI assistant. Apple and OpenAI are also reportedly developing smart glasses.

WATCH: Arm CEO Rene Haas on new partnership with Meta.

Arm CEO Rene Haas on new partnership with Meta: AI in Meta hardware is Arm-based



Source

Big Tech’s AI spending spree: Smart long-term bet or short-term risk?
Technology

Big Tech’s AI spending spree: Smart long-term bet or short-term risk?

In this Club Check-in, CNBC’s Paulina Likos and Zev Fima break down big tech’s massive artificial intelligence spending spree — debating whether these billion-dollar bets will drive long-term cost savings or weigh on near-term returns. Mega-cap tech companies are shelling out billions of dollars to build out AI infrastructure. The big question we’re asking is […]

Read More
Affirm CEO says furloughed federal employees are starting to lose interest in shopping
Technology

Affirm CEO says furloughed federal employees are starting to lose interest in shopping

Affirm CEO Max Levchin said Friday that while the buy now, pay later firm isn’t seeing credit stress among federally employed borrowers due to the government shutdown, there are signs of a change in shopping habits. “We are seeing a very subtle loss of interest in shopping just for that group, and a couple of […]

Read More
Block sinks 10% after weak third quarter results miss Wall Street estimates
Technology

Block sinks 10% after weak third quarter results miss Wall Street estimates

Block shares fell 10% Friday after weak third-quarter earnings fell short of Wall Street expectations and showed slowing profit growth for the company’s Square service. Here is how the company did compared with LSEG estimates: Earnings per share: 54 cents adjusted vs. 67 cents expected Revenue: $6.11 billion vs. $6.31 billion expected Revenue for the quarter was […]

Read More