AR unicorn Magic Leap is again pivoting its core business, this time to serve as a waveguide supplier to other companies making AR glasses, something that we’ve learned comes amid a mass lay off nearly 200 of its core engineering and product development staff.

According to a formal WARN Act notification letter to US government officials last week, the company is set to lay off 193 employees at the company’s Plantation, Florida headquarters.

A wide range of product development and engineering roles are set to be affected come October 1st, the letter reveals, including software, hardware, UX/design, product management, manufacturing engineering, quality, technical program management, and several senior engineering and executive leadership positions.

Although it’s uncertain how many will remain at Magic Leap—estimates point to a few hundred at this point—the mass layoff comes amid a broader shift at Magic Leap, as the company announced earlier this month its was undergoing a “strategic pivot to accelerate the development of AI display glasses.”

The company says it’s now shifting from building first-party AR headsets to taking on the role of “essential AR ecosystems partner, waveguide supplier, and device integration expert for the technology industry.”

“Magic Leap is seizing the moment where our AR innovation and manufacturing expertise create the greatest market impact,” said Scott Carden, SVP of display engineering and manufacturing at Magic Leap. “We’re solving the toughest challenges of scaling waveguide production, from industry-leading waveguide performance to manufacturing and full-device integration. Now, we’re using our unmatched expertise to help partners bring AI display glasses to millions of consumers in the fastest way possible through our waveguide technology.”

Founded in 2010 by Rony Abovitz, Magic Leap is arguably the most well-funded AR startups to date, having massed well over $4 billion in funding from investors including Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, a majority holder at over $1 billion invested, as well as Google, Alibaba, and Qualcomm.

Despite an enviable runway, the company’s first AR headset didn’t exactly live up to the hype. Released in 2018, Magic Leap 1 awkwardly straddled the consumer and enterprise segment at the (then unthinkable) price of $2,300, essentially forcing the company to pivot and drop its consumer ambitions a short two years later. That first pivot away from consumer also marked the departure of CEO and co-founder Rony Abovitz, with its follow-up device Magic Leap 2 released in late 2020 solely targeted at enterprise.

And while Magic Leap has only just announced its waveguide optics pivot, in reality the company was making moves away from first-party devices as early as July 2024, according to a Bloomberg report, which characterized the action as a last ditch effort to make use of the company’s AR optics tech.

Meanwhile, we’ve heard substantially nothing about development of first-party devices, as over the past two years the company has only announced a hardware partnership with Google and manufacturing partnership with Taiwan’s Pegatron, both of which center around licensing and manufacturing waveguides.

Palmer Luckey, the founder of military tech startup Anduril (also the founder of Oculus), quietly teased a pair of unannounced AR glasses that are presumably in development at Anduril. Despite their incredibly compact appearance, Luckey says they are not merely smart glasses, but are indeed built for full AR capability.

Just days after Snap Inc revealed its latest Specs standalone AR glasses, a photo shared on X showed Anduril founder Palmer Luckey wearing what appeared to be some kind of clip-on attachment to his sunglasses. The caption of the photo, shared by Lulu Cheng Meservey, included the quote “Other AR glasses getting literally frame mogged.” This ostensibly referred to Snap’s Specs glasses, which drew significant commentary about whether their design was too bulky to be socially acceptable.

Regardless of where one stands on the size of Specs, the glasses shown in the photo of Luckey appear incredibly compact by comparison. This prompted Road to VR founder Ben Lang to question whether it was actually a fair comparison to make; Lang pointed out that surprisingly compact smart glasses—like the Even Realities G2—are already available on the market today, but they remain compact because they lack the full hardware stack required for true AR glasses.

Luckey responded directly to Lang’s scepticism, saying “[…] these are the real deal! No shortcuts, just really good tech in conjunction with deeply invested partners like Qualcomm, Meta Quest, and [Andrew “Boz” Bosworth, CTO at Meta].”

When asked by Lang if the device pictured is capable of true AR, Luckey added, “correct, [the glasses have] wide-FOV full-color stereo.”

Luckey’s confirmation that the device is capable of proper AR is indeed surprising considering the size. Significant questions, however, remain. Chief among them is whether the device is fully standalone or if it relies on a tethered puck (which would serve to offload battery and/or compute), allowing the device to be much smaller than a pair of standalone AR glasses like Specs.

Given the incredibly compact size of the glasses, a tethered architecture seems like the only possible explanation. However, neither the original photo published by Meservey, nor a follow-up photo published by Luckey, show any clear signs of a tether:

Another major question is whether the device is made as a modular add-on to existing off the shelf glasses. The design of the hardware suggests this as a significant possibility (indeed, the glasses pictured look like a regular pair of Ray-Ban Aviators). But making a simple modular add-on to existing glasses introduces significant complexities for the calibration of optics, displays, and tracking hardware.

Far more is unknown about this device than is known at this stage. But there’s reason to believe it’s legitimate, and possibly connected to Anduril’s EagleEye project, which aims to build an augmented reality helmet to bring superhuman perception to soldiers on the battlefield. In 2025, Anduril announced it had partnered with Meta on XR technology for the military, which aligns with Luckey’s statement that the pictured glasses were thanks, in part, to “deeply invested partners [like Meta].”

Meta is rolling out an update to its line of smart glasses that will disable the camera if the device’s capture LED has been tampered with or destroyed.

Since the rollout of Meta’s second-gen Ray-Ban Glasses in 2024, physically covering the white capture LED on any of the company’s current smart glasses shuts off the onboard camera, something the company did to curb casual misuse.

Before Meta’s mandatory v26 update—which is rolling out now to all Meta Ray-Ban, Meta Oakley and its new $300 Meta Glasses—some users got around the software check by simply drilling out the capture LED hardware itself. Granted, that was already against Meta’s terms of service, which state:

“You may not tamper with the Glasses or otherwise obscure or modify any of the features on the Glasses that signal to others that the Glasses are recording.”

Still, that wasn’t much of a deterrent, since the hardware check failed to notice when the capture LED was physically disabled, and not just covered up by a piece of tape.

Speaking to The Verge, Meta VP of Wearables Alex Himel says the privacy-focused update was meant to follow the release of the company’s cheaper Meta Glasses, which notably lack Ray-Ban or Oakley styling. At the time, Himel told The Verge Meta was aware of increasing misuse amid growing adoption.

Meta doesn’t seem to be outright bricking glasses with drilled-out capture LEDs, however not having the camera severely limits what people can do with them, since they don’t include any sort of display, which ought to be deterrent enough for now.

Lacking a display has essentially forced Meta to invest in use cases beyond the comparatively straight forward expectation of taking photos and video, as the company has released updates that bring camera features such as continuous Live AI capture, which lets Meta AI see what you’re seeing so it can help out with tasks or otherwise identify things directly in your filed-of-view.

And while Meta appears to be distancing itself from one of the least savory consumer segments by putting an end to surreptitious public recording, it’s also seemingly frontrunning increased legislation in a growing number of US states and cities, such as New York state and Philadelphia. Public court houses there have recently banned smart glasses of any type, even those with prescription lenses.

Scrutiny around privacy seems to be coming from all sides though, as a recent Wired report maintains Meta has essentially baked in facial recognition to its smart glasses, which is notably still unreleased at this time.

In March, it was revealed Meta was facing a class action lawsuit in the US over privacy concerns tied to its smart glasses, as the company is accused of sending private camera footage to a Kenya-based subcontractor for manual review to train its AI models.

HTC has been attempting a second act as an XR and AI hardware company for a few years now with mixed results. And while the once-dominant smartphone company is still the midst of a protracted revenue decline, HTC seems to have stabilized.

As reported by Taiwan’s Financial Express News, HTC revealed at its annual shareholders meeting a consolidated revenue of NT$292 million (~$10 million) for June 2026, showing a year-over-year decrease of 8.5% and first-half revenue decrease of 9.7% year-over-year.

Although that doesn’t sound particularly encouraging, the decline actually represents a rare degree of stability for the Taiwan-based company, which has battled significant revenue losses since as far back as 2013.

Granted, HTC is now a fraction of its previous size, which was before selling a significant portion of its smartphone engineering team and IP to Google in 2018, and a number of XR hardware talent to Google in 2025.

Still, HTC appears to be settling in at a much lower revenue base, as the company is ostensibly pinning its hopes on AI, smart glasses, its VIVERSE metaverse platform, and its usual smattering of enterprise hardware and services.

Notably, HTC Chairman Cher Wang stated at the company’s recent shareholders’ meeting that AI has become one of the most important trends it’s following, with the company’s first AI-powered smart glasses, the VIVE Eagle, expected to arrive in the US and Europe sometime in Q3 2026.

Wang also highlighted the company’s metaverse platform, VIVERSE, which has transformed into a user-generative platform since last year, having attracted over 1.7 million month active users in May, with more than 32,000 pieces of content and at least 14,000 creators joining.

However, HTC’s main challenge remains converting these user numbers and strategic initiatives into meaningful revenue growth, something the company hasn’t clearly demonstrated since making the pivot from smartphones to XR.

Outside of XR, HTC telecom subsidiary G REIGNS also made progress in industrial applications, as its partners Taiyang Technology and Alaska-based Microcom are working on an end-to-end open radio access network (RAN) solution, which is currently aiming at the US market and remote areas. G REIGNS is also introducing AI, 5G private networks, and edge computing technologies to Taiwan’s deep-sea fishing industry, which launched a smart fish-finding solution to help fisheries improve fish search efficiency and real-time decision-making capabilities.

One area not discussed was HTC’s XR headset strategy, which seems to have stalled somewhat following the 2024 release of its VIVE Focus Vision standalone in September 2024. As the successor to VIVE Focus 3, the $1,150 Focus Vision was primarily aimed at enterprise XR and enthusiasts.

That said, HTC has managed to survive the collapse of its smartphone business while staying afloat in XR amid Meta’s domination of the segment, which is no small feat. Still, its next big test will be to see whether it can efficiently build off these revenue streams in the coming years, and maybe, just maybe reclaim some of its former glory.

Dubai-based smart contact lenses startup XPANCEO announced it’s expanding a partnership with China’s JBD to co-develop a new micro-display designed specifically for smart contact lenses.

Previously, the companies co-developed a printed circuit board with integrated micro-display, as well as a unique optical system capable of forming a near-eye image for easy focus.

Now XPANCEO is deepening ties with JBD, the Shanghai-based micro display company, to co-develop the tiny displays that could one day be in consumer smart contacts of the future.

Notably, JBD is behind some positively miniscule XR displays; one such display we saw back at CES 2020 was smaller than a penny, but capable of a blinding 3,000,000 nits.

The companies say the partnership will focus on scalability and manufacturability, which could lead to their first mass-market production run of specialized contact lens microdisplays. That said, the pieces are still coming together.

Packing everything into a contact lens form factor is a major feat, with XPANCEO noting it should be around the thickness of a human hair to ensure optimal comfort and wearability.

Another critical challenge is brightness management, since light levels must be carefully balanced to ensure ocular safety while remaining strong enough to see clearly and comfortably. Since images are projected directly onto the user’s retina, prospective smart lenses can make use of lower brightness than smart of AR glasses, the companies say.

In May, XPANCEO revealed it struck a similar partnership with France-based solid-state battery startup ITEN, which aims to solve another big challenge in ocular wearables; conventional batteries are thick, not durable enough, and aren’t suitable to be used in in devices worn directly on the human eye.

And while XPANCEO has its work cut out for it, the company seems to be in the best possible position, as the company secured its Series A financing round in July 2025 to the tune of $250 million, garnering it a $1.35 billion valuation.

Even Realities, the China-based smart glasses company, has officially secured unicorn status with its most recent Pre-B financing round, bringing the company $150 million and a $1 billion valuation.

The round, which was led by Meituan and Tencent, is said to be primarily directed toward the development of Even Realities’ next-gen smart glasses platform, the deepening of AI integration, and the scaling of global operations.

The latest round brings the company’s overall funding to $159 million; its initial $9 million Series A round included investment by CDH Investments, Cyanhill Capital, and China Growth Capital among others.

Unlike Meta’s slate of camera-clad smart glasses, Even Realities builds frames that incorporate binocular, monochrome green displays, critically omitting any sort of camera. And its flagship smart glasses, Even G2, is one of the leaders in the quickly growing ‘display glasses’ segment, incorporating user input through its health-tracking Even R1 smart ring.

“Every generation of computing has brought information closer to people, from the desktop to the laptop, from the laptop to the smartphone,” said Will Wang, founder and CEO of Even Realities. “We believe smart glasses are the next step in that progression. The future isn’t about pulling out a device every time you need information. It’s about having the right information available exactly when you need it, while remaining fully present in the world around you. This investment has shown us that our investors share the same belief that good technology should extend life, not interrupt it. We will continue building toward that future.”

The financing comes as smart glasses enter a new phase of growth, with companies such as Google, Meta, Apple, and Samsung investing heavily in the consumer segment.

Even Realties says its new funding will support continued investment in hardware and software development, deepen AI integrations, and expand global operations to meet growing demand. The company says it also plans to accelerate product innovation as it continues building “a new generation of smart glasses designed to make information more accessible in everyday life.”