Meta Puts a $299 Price on AI Glasses and a Prediction Market in the Pipeline
MENLO PARK, Calif.—Meta Platforms Inc. on Wednesday introduced a new generation of AI glasses at a price that undercuts every serious rival, then told investors it plans to move into prediction markets, a business far outside its social-media roots.
The glasses, built with EssilorLuxottica, the Franco-Italian eyewear group, sell for $299, roughly a third less than Meta’s previous model. They carry a camera, open-ear speakers and a voice assistant that can answer questions about what the wearer sees. A version with a voice modeled on Kylie Jenner launched alongside the standard model, part of Meta’s push to make the device a fashion accessory rather than a gadget.
The pricing is deliberate. Meta has said repeatedly that the first generation of smart glasses proved people will wear them if they look like ordinary eyewear and cost like it. At $299, the new model undercuts Apple’s headset by more than $3,000 and sits below the cheapest comparable glasses from rival makers. Meta executives said the company can afford to sell hardware at thin margins because the glasses will feed users into its AI assistant and its advertising system.
The prediction-market plan is the more unusual announcement. Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said Meta intends to build its own platform for betting on future events, following the model popularized by Polymarket and Kalshi, the two operators that have turned event contracts into a mainstream product over the past two years. Zuckerberg framed the move as a natural extension of Meta’s infrastructure: a company that already processes billions of payments, hosts the world’s largest conversation platform and runs a massive AI operation can offer prediction markets at a fraction of the cost of its smaller rivals.
People familiar with the plans said Meta has been studying the market for months and sees an opening in scale. Polymarket proved that millions of people will trade contracts on elections, interest rates and sports; Kalshi proved that regulated, dollar-denominated markets can operate inside the U.S. Meta’s version, the people said, would lean on the same infrastructure it uses for payments and commerce, with an eye toward integrating prediction tools into WhatsApp and Instagram.
The move continues a pattern that has defined Meta’s decade: entering businesses others invented and competing on cost. The company built its social empire by improving on existing networks, copied Snapchat’s stories format, cloned TikTok’s short video, and undercut established players in messaging. Zuckerberg has said openly that Meta’s advantage is distribution—two billion users—and its willingness to spend whatever it takes to win a category.
Analysts said the glasses and the prediction market share a logic. Both are bets on habit: Meta wants to be present when users ask a question, glance at the world or make a small bet, and both feed the company’s broader AI agenda. The glasses give the assistant eyes and ears; the prediction market gives it a real-time gauge of what users believe.
The glasses market is where the economics get interesting. Ray-Ban Meta, the previous generation, became one of the best-selling wearable devices of the past decade, with sales running into the millions of units and the category growing fast enough to draw rivals such as Amazon and Samsung into the segment. Meta’s strategy is to keep pushing the price down until the glasses stop being a novelty and become a default accessory, the way smartphones did. The $299 tag is aimed directly at that threshold, and analysts said the company can absorb losses on the hardware for years if the device becomes a gateway to its assistant and its ad system.
The timing is not accidental. Meta has been under pressure from investors to show that its massive AI spending produces products people actually use. The glasses are a tangible answer: a device that puts the assistant in daily use. The prediction market is a second answer, a financial product that could generate transaction revenue with thin infrastructure.
The company has yet to say when the prediction platform will launch, and it faces a thicket of regulatory questions. U.S. commodity regulators have spent years deciding which event contracts are lawful, and state gaming laws vary widely. Meta said it will seek the necessary approvals before launch, and people familiar with the matter said the company expects a phased rollout beginning in the U.S.
For now, the glasses are the concrete product. Meta said the $299 model ships in July, with the Kylie Jenner edition following later in the summer. EssilorLuxottica will manufacture the frames and distribute through its optical retail network, giving Meta access to storefronts it could not build itself.
The combination—cheap hardware, celebrity voices and a new financial product—shows how Meta intends to hold its position as AI reshapes consumer technology. Zuckerberg’s remark to investors on Wednesday captured the approach: the company does not need to invent categories, he said, it needs to make them cheaper and put them in front of a billion users. Prediction markets, like glasses before them, are about to learn what that means.
