Meta announced plans to start testing an AI‑powered pendant as early as next year, a detail revealed in an internal memo reviewed by The Information. The device expands the company’s wearable portfolio beyond its already popular Ray‑Ban smart glasses, which captured more than seven million unit sales in 2025 and now dominate roughly 82 percent of the smart‑glasses market.
The memo also details a new enterprise‑level subscription dubbed Wearables for Work. The offering would layer business‑grade features—such as meeting transcription, ambient note‑taking, CRM integration and hands‑free access to workplace tools—onto Meta’s existing hardware, positioning the devices as productivity enhancers rather than consumer novelties.
Wearables for Work subscription
Wearables for Work mirrors Microsoft’s Copilot model but delivers its capabilities through hardware. By tying AI‑driven voice queries, real‑time translation and visual identification to a paid tier, Meta hopes to unlock a recurring revenue stream for its Reality Labs division, which posted a $4 billion loss in Q1 2026 alone. The subscription could also rejuvenate the division’s broader product slate, which includes upcoming VR headsets, a planned smartwatch codenamed Malibu 2 and a Vision Pro competitor.
The pendant itself stems from Meta’s 2025 acquisition of Limitless, a startup that raised more than $33 million from investors such as Sam Altman and Andreessen Horowitz. Limitless had previously built a clip‑on pendant that recorded and transcribed conversations. After the acquisition, the startup halted new sales but continued supporting existing users.
Meta’s approach differs from earlier attempts in the AI‑pendant space. Humane’s AI Pin, launched in 2024, sank under poor reviews and was sold to HP for $116 million after a brief market presence. Friend, another startup, spent over $1 million on subway ads yet struggled to attract users. Both devices failed to demonstrate enough utility to justify wearing an extra gadget.
Privacy and regulatory hurdles
Meta’s history with wearables has already attracted legal scrutiny. The company’s Ray‑Ban glasses faced lawsuits over how recorded footage is handled, and regulators in the European Union continue to probe Meta’s compliance with the Digital Markets Act and GDPR. A pendant that captures spoken words raises similar concerns, potentially limiting its rollout in markets with stricter privacy rules.
Industry analysts see the pendant as part of a fourth wearables category—ambient AI capture—that supplements smartphones rather than replaces them. While Apple Watch dominates the smartwatch segment and Oura eyes an IPO, Meta aims to carve out a niche for always‑on recording devices that feed AI assistants with real‑time context.
Whether the AI pendant can avoid the pitfalls that doomed its predecessors depends on Meta’s ability to deliver tangible utility and earn user trust. If successful, the device could become a cornerstone of the company’s strategy to reverse more than $60 billion in cumulative losses incurred by Reality Labs since its inception. For now, the upcoming test phase will be the first real gauge of market appetite for a wearable that lives on the user’s chest.
This article was written with the assistance of AI.
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