Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s personal fortune has climbed to $201 billion. As he envisions AR glasses Orion to be the future of computing, will they benefit the public?

With so much going on in AI, investors seem to be looking past its Metaverse segment. That may seem odd, as the company once known as Facebook changed its name to Meta in 2021. With the company's Reality Labs segment continuing to lose billions of dollars every quarter, investors may have written off the effort.

Meta has revealed Orion, the first glasses holographic in augmented realityThe news was announced by Mark Zuckerberg during the conference Meta Connect 2024. Here's what we know a

Perhaps the most interesting feature of the Orion glasses are the lenses, which are not made from glass or plastic. Instead, Meta is using a silicon carbide where tiny projections are beamed onto the lenses. This material is supposed to be more durable, lighter and features an ultrahigh index for refraction of the on-board projectors.

Instead Meta seems to be aiming at being affordable in terms of phones and laptops – which to me would be somewhere around $700 (around £700 / AU$1,350). Admittedly, this makes a lot of sense – $299 / £299 / AU$449 would be a surprisingly low price for smart specs that are being billed as an eventual smartphone replacement.

Companies like Meta and Snap aren’t ready to sell their AR wearables to consumers yet—but their latest devices show significant progress.