Meta CTO explains why it was important for Mark Zuckerberg to show off $10,000 smart glasses you can’t buy

Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth at the Meta Connect 2024 developer conference.

It’s no secret Meta has been burning billions a year on Mark Zuckerberg’s big metaverse bet.

He’s made it clear it’s a long-term play that could make Meta a leader in the next big computing platform since the iPhone ushered in the smartphone era. He’s preached patience to Wall Street.

But on Wednesday’s Meta Connect 2024 developer conference, the CEO was finally able to unveil what many of those billions had been spent developing: the Orion AR glasses.

Zuckerberg and his CTO, Andrew Bosworth, are clearly excited about the milestone — even if you won’t be able to buy the glasses for multiple years. As they see it, it’s an important step toward convincing people to buy into the company’s vision.

In an interview with analyst and Stratechery’s Ben Thompson, Bosworth said that he felt “so gratified” to finally reveal the physical manifestation of Zuckerberg’s vision after years of “intense pressure.”

“Until a year ago probably, we didn’t know if we could build any of them still, it was still a bit of a risk,” he said. “Then to come up a few months ago and play the software, it was genuinely an emotional moment for me.”

Meta has garnered scrutiny from investors for its colossal cumulative loss of over $50 billion since 2019 in its Reality Labs division, which includes Meta’s virtual and augmented reality operations as well as its metaverse software efforts. Despite recent attempts to rein in costs, the tech giant’s latest second-quarter results reported losing another $4.48 billion in operating costs for the metaverse — and the company expects those losses to “increase meaningfully year-over-year.”

However, while Orion has been marketed as the future of computing, it seems it will stay in the future — for a while. Each pair of glasses reportedly costs $10,000 to make, and Bosworth said scaling that down to be suitable for purchase will take roughly three to five years.

Meta’s Orion AR glasses, which feature displays built into the lenses and an array of sensors.

But Bosworth said the company still wanted to showcase its vision of where things are going — and the tangible results after a decade of investing in AR.

“The first reason we’re showing it is as a proof point for people,” he said. “It’s like, ‘Hey, invest with us, believe in us, if you’re a technologist, come work with us, this is the thing.'”

The second target audience was the developers. The CTO said the goal was to “ignite” enthusiasm for those investing in making apps for Meta’s platform.

“If you’re investing in our social platform, you’re going to get that dividend not just in the Quest ecosystem, but eventually also in the AR ecosystem,” he said, referencing the company’s Quest mixed-reality headsets.

And Zuckerberg has long been a staunch believer in augmented reality being tech’s next big thing after the iPhone. The Facebook founder told The Verge that Orion is “the quintessential vision” of AR as the “next major multibillion-person computing platform.”

Meta, then called Facebook, missed out on the latest platform shift from PC to smartphones, with Apple and Google dominating the hardware and software. When Meta ships out a new version of Facebook, Instagram, or WhatsApp, it has to play by Google and Apple’s app store rules.

This time around, Zuckerberg is hoping to come out ahead with Meta’s software and hardware ecosystem.

“And then all these other things are going to get built out around it,” he told The Verge.

Mark Zuckerberg shows off the Orion AR glasses prototype at Meta Connect 2024. 

Both Zuckerberg and Bosworth are facing fierce competition, especially from Apple.

In 2020, Apple CEO Tim Cook once said that he viewed AR as “the next big thing” and that it would “pervade our entire lives.” The company released its own wearable spatial computer with the Apple Vision Pro in February, angling for the high-end market with a $3499 price tag. Heavy and bulky, the Vision Pro is currently up against Meta’s lower-priced Quest lineup, which now starts at $299.

But as Apple eyes cheaper versions and lighter form factors more akin to glasses, and Meta works to lower the price to manufacture Orion, the stage is set for them to battle for control of the next platform shift.

Mark Zuckerberg knows it. He said earlier this month that he sees Apple as Meta’s “primary competitor” over the next decade.

With Orion existing, even as an absurdly expensive almost-developer kit, Meta feels like it’s finally found a potential successor to the smartphone.

“It could do it, that’s exactly how I feel,” Bosworth told Thompson.