Davy
Small-Cap Investor, Archetype-Research, Undercovered Companies & Data-Center Supply Chains
Goertek should be one of the winners as smart glasses near mass adoption, supplying assembly, optics and components. Meta's upcoming glasses, due spring 2027, are a considerable step toward consumer adoption because they solve the clunkiness of earlier headsets, bringing the category close to the early-majority stage of the S-curve. These glasses should eventually be as big as the smartphone market. x.comÂ
Goertek is the purer AR/VR play because it designs and builds the hardware inside smart glasses for Meta, Apple, Snap and most Chinese AR/VR brands, for whom glasses are still a tiny share of revenue. It handles optics, waveguides, acoustics, sensors and precision components through device design and final assembly. Growth is fast: global smart-eyewear shipments rose 130% in Q1 2026 and Meta's smart-glasses sales over 250%. No other supplier can replace Goertek across all of that at scale. x.comÂ
Meta and Apple are in a long-term race to build practical VR glasses that could break the iPhone's two-decade stranglehold in the 2030s. Meta started light and comfortable but must add orders of magnitude more power; Apple started with the powerful but bulky Vision Pro, essentially a prototype, and must shrink it. They may meet in the middle in the early 2030s. Meta's new glasses are a big leap forward, but this is still the first inning, and owning both makes sense. x.com x.com x.comÂ
Snap's smart glasses will likely only hurt its core business. Unlike Meta, Snap cannot afford to invest billions in bets that may never pay off, and Meta should end up with a near-monopoly on smart glasses. x.comÂ
Meta is just getting started, with its Muse AI model and VR glasses still in their early days. x.comÂ
Meta's new Muse-integrated hardware is going to be pretty big. As @amitisinvesting notes, the event centered on devices tied to Muse, including glasses that could see wider adoption, plus 15+ new partner connectors. Against @HirschVentures' point that consumers lack disposable income, people still look for things like this to splurge on as a distraction, just as they keep paying $8 for a Starbucks coffee. x.com x.comÂ
Meta is having its iPhone moment with Muse, while the market still sees a social media company overspending on AI. Muse is a personal assistant that can shop, book travel, schedule appointments and send emails, through its own app or inside WhatsApp, with Ray-Ban glasses next. Meta is one of the only companies with all the pieces, and Muse can sit on top of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Threads and the glasses. The market fixated on capex and missed what the money was building. x.comÂ
Meta's VR glasses have just killed Snap's Spectacles, leaving anyone long Snap on the wrong side. x.comÂ
Meta is spending $180B on compute this year with no clear purpose, a sign of lost focus. Nobody wants its open-source LLM and it is not building effective workplace productivity tools. Meta only needs to hold its social media share, monetize WhatsApp and grow Threads, rather than spreading into glasses, AR, prediction markets and compute. x.comÂ
Warby Parker is still a terrible model, since direct-to-consumer brands that move into retail rarely work. The pivot to contacts saved it, and the Google glasses hype is fading. x.comÂ
Meta should break out of its consolidation later this year or by early next year as it makes a lot of progress in AI. x.comÂ
Snap's Specs and AI platform are drawing heavyweight partners: Nvidia, Salesforce and Amazon teamed up with Snap for Snap Intelligence and Enterprise. Gen 1 Specs suit early business adoption, but consumer adoption hinges on comfort and style, so the next generation must shrink the frame and move hardware into a small pod off the glasses, as Meta got right. Nobody refused a Walkman or iPod because of a wire. x.com x.comÂ
