Smart glasses accounted for more than a third of EssilorLuxottica’s growth in Q3 2025.
The French-Italian giant EssilorLuxottica is the largest eyewear company in the world by far. It owns iconic brands like Ray-Ban, Oakley, Oliver Peoples, and Persol, and has exclusive licenses with major fashion companies like Prada, Armani, Burberry, and Chanel. It also owns Sunglass Hut, and has more than 18,000 retail stores in total worldwide.
Meta has so far partnered with EssilorLuxottica for six smart glasses products:
- The discontinued Ray-Ban Stories from 2021.
- The first-generation Ray-Ban Meta.
- Oakley Meta HSTN.
- The second-generation Ray-Ban Meta.
- Oakley Meta Vanguard.
- Meta Ray-Ban Display.
Last year Meta and EssilorLuxottica signed an agreement extending their partnership “into the next decade” to develop “multi-generational smart eyewear products”, And earlier this year, Meta invested €3 billion in EssilorLuxottica, taking a 3% stake.
David Heaney
In its Q3 call with investors, EssilorLuxottica said its overall revenue grew 11.7%, of which “in excess of 4 percentage points” was from its Wearables division, which currently handles the Meta smart glasses partnership and Nuance Audio.
Back in February, its Q4 2024 earnings call, EssilorLuxottica said that the Ray-Ban Meta glasses had sold 2 million units, and in its Q2 2025 call in July that sales had more than tripled since last year, performing “exceptionally well”.
During the February call, the company also announced that its annual production capacity for smart glasses would be increased to 10 million by the end of 2026.
When asked about this on the new call, CFO Stefano Grassi said that because of the “further acceleration” of the smart glasses business since then, the production schedule has now been brought forward, with the company expecting to hit the 10 million annual rate earlier than the end of next year.
Grassi also confirmed that EssilorLuxottica’s smart glasses business is profitable, “in absolute terms”, and that around 20% of buyers opt for official prescription lenses.
David Heaney
The Meta-EssilorLuxottica alliance is by far leading the smart glasses market. But it will face serious competition in coming years.
At I/O back in May, Google announced that it’s working with Warby Parker and Gentle Monster, two of EssilorLuxottica’s rising competitors, to develop Gemini smart glasses. It also plans to work with Kering Eyewear in the future. In June, South Korean media reported that Google was in the final stages of taking a 4% stake in Gentle Monster.
Apple too reportedly plans to launch similar smart glasses, with Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman and supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo claiming that Apple plans to ship as soon as early 2027.
