Silicon Valley has spent the better part of a decade trying to convince people that strapping a computer to their face is a perfectly normal thing to do. The results, financially speaking, have been roughly what you'd expect from an industry that sells bulky, socially awkward hardware nobody really asked for.
"Everybody's losing money," said Chi Xu, founder and CEO of Xreal, a longtime Google partner, with the cheerful resignation of someone who has accepted that reality is a prerequisite for changing it. Xu was at Google's I/O conference in Mountain View last week, hyping Xreal's Project Aura, the company's latest attempt to create XR glasses that people might actually want to use.
Xu's explanation for the industry's persistent unprofitability is refreshingly direct: "That's because it's very hard, what we're doing." Fair enough.
For years, smart glasses have suffered from a trifecta of problems: they were bulky, uncomfortable, and socially awkward, with software that offered approximately zero reasons to wear them. But Xu and other industry insiders believe things are finally changing - and they credit Meta, whose 2023 Ray-Ban partnership produced one of the first smart glasses models that actually sold in meaningful numbers. (Though, in a plot twist that surprises no one, the Reality Labs division behind them still operates at a massive loss.)
Enter Xreal's Aura: wired smart glasses with embedded OLED displays that let you watch high-resolution videos directly in the frames. The catch? They come tethered to a "puck" - a phone-shaped mini-computer you're supposed to slip into your pocket. Yes, it's awkward, but in exchange you get an immersive Google Maps app, VR YouTube videos, a painting app that creates holographic imagery only you can see, hand-tracked games, and basic web surfing.
"Whether you are following a floating recipe while cooking, setting up a private workspace at a coffee shop or on a flight, or watching a movie on a virtual big screen at home, the experience is seamless," the company promises, painting a picture of a future where nobody makes eye contact in public ever again.
Xu also envisions professionals using the device. "It's not just about watching the NBA game in a hologram type of format, you could also go to a coffee shop and do some work," he said, presumably while ignoring that typing on a virtual keyboard while wearing glasses that obscure your vision is its own special kind of hell.
For now, Aura is available only to developers, with a commercial launch planned for later this year. Xreal is also working on an IPO expected before 2026 ends, though Xu declined to discuss details. In the meantime, the company is trying to turn a profit by raising gross margins and cutting marketing costs. "Next year is the year when we could actually break even," Xu said. We'll believe it when we see it - preferably through a pair of glasses that don't make us look like a rejected prop from a 1990s cyberpunk film.