(Bloomberg/Tommaso Ebhardt and Chiara Albanese) — The world’s greatest eyewear maker is positioning itself as a pacesetter within the rising class of good glasses, a tool that might turn into as prevalent as an iPhone.
EssilorLuxottica SA — proprietor of Ray-Ban, Oakley and Persol — has teamed up with Meta Platforms Inc. to fabricate and promote AI-equipped eyewear, wearable tech that Silicon Valley giants have extolled as the subsequent consumer-tech blockbuster.
“Glasses, which have long been seen as prosthetics and later as fashion accessories, are poised to become the central device in people’s lives, possibly replacing smartphones,” Chairman and Chief Govt Officer Francesco Milleri stated on Bloomberg’s Italian-language podcast, Quello Che i Soldi Non Dicono. “We could foresee in the near future hundreds of millions of smart glasses interconnected with each other, and with the people who wear them creating huge communities.”
Milleri stated the corporate was increasing its manufacturing capability for Ray-Ban Meta, set to achieve 10 million annual models by the top of subsequent yr. This is also used for different good glasses, in addition to EssilorLuxottica’s Nuance Audio glasses which combine listening to help.
The push into good glasses by Meta, Apple Inc. and others dovetails with Milleri’s long-term technique to develop the French-Italian firm by including wearables and medical expertise, whereas preserving its dominance in conventional eyewear, he stated in a uncommon interview.
The 65-year-old govt was Luxottica founder Leonardo Del Vecchio’s closest aide, and took over the chairman function in 2022 after Del Vecchio died. Since then, the corporate’s market worth has greater than doubled to over €125 billion ($146 billion).
Whereas Milleri avoids the limelight, he’s been constructing on the vertically built-in platform Del Vecchio created by increasing Italy’s Luxottica by means of acquisitions, combining it with French lens maker Essilor in 2018. Stores reminiscent of Sunglass Hut within the US give EssilorLuxottica unparalleled distribution clout and direct entry to shoppers, whereas licensing offers add luxurious manufacturers reminiscent of Prada and Armani.
Vertical Integration
The following step is to make use of EssilorLuxottica’s array of laboratories, factories and shops to develop and promote progressive, higher-cost merchandise like myopia-correcting lenses, medical expertise utilized in doctor-patient settings, and the wearables enterprise embodied by the partnership with Meta.
Whereas the Meta collaboration generated an estimated €365 million in income for EssilorLuxottica in 2024, the overall may strategy €800 million this yr and surpass €6 billion by 2030, primarily based on essentially the most optimistic projections from Barclays. The analysts see room for business good glasses gross sales to rise from about 3 million models a yr to 60 million by 2035.
Good glasses supply customers a type of augmented actuality, with options such messages or instructions projected onto the lens, or voice-activated AI assistants. Meta is spending billions to show good glasses into turn into a major manner customers expertise Meta’s AI services and products. The social-networking large has invested $3.5 billion in EssilorLuxottica, taking a few 3% fairness stake, individuals aware of the matter stated earlier this yr.
Because the class grows, the companions face elevated competitors from Chinese language and U.S. friends. There’s additionally no certainty that the expertise will catch hearth with shoppers — Meta’s foray into digital actuality headsets, for instance, stays a piece in progress.
In a latest signal that good glasses are gaining traction, Apple has adopted in Meta’s footsteps — shelving an overhaul of its Imaginative and prescient Professional headset to redirect assets towards growing good glasses, Bloomberg reported this month.
Final month, Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg unveiled the $799 Meta Ray-Ban Show, that includes a display in the suitable lens that may present textual content messages, video calls, turn-by-turn instructions and visible outcomes from queries to Meta’s AI service. The show may function a viewfinder for the digital camera on a person’s cellphone and floor music playback.
Over time, Zuckerberg envisions individuals doing extra duties on their good glasses. “We’re going to get to this point, probably sometime in the 2030s, where you have your phone with you, but it’s going to stay in your pocket more,” he stated in March.
Milleri, who offers straight with Zuckerberg on the smart-glasses mission, stated it’s necessary for EssilorLuxottica to leverage its strengths by cooperating with leaders in different industries. “Only a collaborative model — a networked company — can maintain leadership in innovation and technology,” he stated.
Medical Tech, Financial institution Offers
Past good glasses, EssilorLuxottica is investing in medical expertise, together with AI functions within the medical subject — and even venturing past ophthalmology, Milleri stated.
In 2024, the corporate acquired the streetwear model Supreme to develop ties with youthful shoppers. EssilorLuxottica has the chance to additionally bid for Giorgio Armani SpA, after being talked about as a potential investor by the late designer in his will. Milleri didn’t elaborate past an earlier assertion calling the Italian style home an “evolutionary prospect.”
The EssilorLuxottica CEO has additionally been a foremost character within the Italian banking business’s latest M&A spree, as head of the Del Vecchio household’s holding firm, Delfin Sarl. It has supported Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena SpA’s acquisition of Mediobanca, and changing into the customer’s single greatest investor with a 17.5% stake.
Nonetheless, glasses will stay central to EssiloLuxottica’s future.
“Technology, digital, and superintelligence will open up interactions with worlds that are now completely remote,” Milleri stated within the interview. “Not just social and medical, but we’ll see the application of our wearable computing in the world of home automation, entertainment, autonomous driving, or air, light, and sound quality control.”
Extra tales like this can be found on bloomberg.com
©2025 Bloomberg L.P.
Initially Printed: October 9, 2025 at 8:44 AM PDT
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