Xreal, Google’s smart glasses partner, says the industry is at a turning point
Original: Xreal, Google’s smart glasses partner, thinks it has finally mastered this notoriously tricky industry
Xreal says smart glasses may finally be viable as hardware, OS, and UI pieces come together.
Xreal CEO Chi Xu told TechCrunch the smart glasses industry may be reaching an inflection point after years of losses and awkward products. Its Project Aura XR glasses use embedded OLED displays but rely on a tethered puck for computing. The developer-only device is planned for commercial release later this year, while Xreal works toward a possible 2026 IPO and future breakeven.
TechCrunch reports that smart glasses have long been a dream Silicon Valley repeatedly chases but struggles to profit from: conceptually, they promise to let people wear mobile computing on their face without constantly staring at a phone; but in reality, over the past decade-plus they have often been stuck on issues such as being bulky, uncomfortable, socially awkward, and lacking sufficiently compelling software use cases. Xreal founder and CEO Chi Xu, interviewed during Google I/O, admitted that "everyone is losing money" in this industry, because what needs to be done is inherently hard. Nonetheless, he believes the market is entering a turning point, the key being that several elements—hardware, the operating system, and the user interface—are gradually falling into place. The article also mentions that the smart glasses Meta and Ray-Ban launched in their 2023 partnership are one of the few cases of actually selling devices in large quantities, even though Meta's relevant division, Reality Labs, still bears enormous losses. Xreal's current flagship, Project Aura, is a wired XR pair of glasses with an OLED display built into the frame, allowing users to watch high-resolution video within the glasses; but it still needs to connect to a phone-sized mini computing device called a "puck," which can be placed in a pocket during use. Xreal believes this trade-off buys a richer experience, including immersive Google Maps, VR YouTube videos, a drawing application that creates holographic images only the user can see via gesture tracking, gesture-operated games, and basic web browsing. Xu also emphasizes that the device is aimed not only at entertainment consumers, but also at serving professional work scenarios, such as creating a private workspace in a cafe or on an airplane. Currently, Aura is open only to developers, and Xreal plans a commercial launch later this year; the company is also advancing an IPO it expects to complete before the end of 2026, though Xu did not reveal more details. On the business side, Xreal is working to raise gross margins and lower marketing and sales costs, and Xu says the company has a chance to break even next year.
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