Meta will offer Orion AR glasses to developers next year, ahead of a consumer AR glasses launch in 2027, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reports.
The claim was included in Gurman's wider report about Meta's full smart glasses plans, in which he also said the company will start selling Oakley smart glasses as part of its partnership with EssilorLuxottica, in addition to the existing Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses. The report also included details of the pricing and input method of the Meta HUD glasses launching this year.
David Heaney
Meta is already distributing Orion AR glasses to a very small group of developers, but Gurman's report suggests this effort will become more widespread in 2026.
The Orion AR glasses, presented at Meta Connect back in September, are by far the most advanced fully-functional glasses publicly known to exist, with a field of view of around 70 degrees diagonal in a body weighing less than 100 grams. But Meta describes Orion as merely a prototype, a "time machine that lets us live in the future". The company freely admits that Orion's field of view relies on components and materials that aren't yet possible to affordably manufacture at scale, and won't be any time soon, and that each unit would cost around $10,000 to make.
As such, Orion itself isn't becoming a product. But Meta does plan to release an AR glasses product that leverages much of the R&D that went into Orion. The consumer product itself is reportedly codenamed Artemis. And while Gurman reports that Artemis will be sleeker and lighter than Orion, previous reports indicate it will also have a narrower field of view.
David Heaney
Regardless of its specs, consumer AR glasses might not be appealing without an array of useful apps that run on it. If Gurman's report is accurate, Meta may be hoping the developers it chooses can deliver exactly that using Orion in 2026, in time for the arrival of Artemis in 2027.
