Snapchat, the owner of the Snapchat messenger, has officially announced plans to begin selling its first AR glasses, Specs (formerly Spectacles), to a wide audience in 2026. This was announced by the company’s CEO Evan Spiegel at the Augmented World Expo conference in Long Beach, California.
Snap Specs will be a fully autonomous gadget that works without being tied to a smartphone. For this purpose, the glasses have a built-in processor, battery, and a special Snap OS operating system.
The glasses will recognize gestures, respond to voice control, and track hand movements.
The developer is betting big on AI integration, and for this, Snap has secured the support of OpenAI and Google, and is also collaborating with Niantic to build spatial maps.
Snap plans to offer Specs to consumers as an affordable alternative to, say, Apple’s Vision Pro or Meta Ray-Ban. The glasses could be priced around $300, well below similar devices.
Snap has invested $3 billion in Spectacles to date, a small amount compared to many competitors like Meta.
