Unlock Editor’s Digest for free
FT editor Roula Khalaf picks her favorite stories in this week’s newsletter.
Facebook owner Meta has explored a multibillion-dollar investment in eyewear group EssilorLuxottica as the social media platform ramps up its push to develop smart glasses.
The Silicon Valley company was considering taking a small stake in the 87 billion euro Franco-Italian group, according to multiple people familiar with its thinking.
The move comes as Meta is in talks with EssilorLuxottica to deepen their existing collaboration following the successful launch of an improved version of its “Ray-Ban Meta” smart glasses last year, some of the people said.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has spent billions of dollars in recent years entering the wearable technology market, for example by creating virtual reality headsets. Meanwhile, Paris-listed EssilorLuxottica has also been pushing offers that may attract a new generation of shoppers.
There is no guarantee that any investment will happen, people close to the negotiations said. Meta was working with Morgan Stanley on the matter, according to one of the people.
EssilorLuxottica’s share price jumped nearly 5 percent on Thursday after the FT report.
Meta, EssilorLuxottica and Morgan Stanley declined to comment.
The first Ray-Ban Meta glasses were launched in 2021, but the latest generation, launched in October last year, sold more in a few months than the previous ones in two years, EssilorLuxottica CEO Francesco Milleri said at an event earlier this week.
The latest version of the glasses allows users to stream what they see directly to Facebook and Instagram. In the US, the glasses are integrated with the Meta artificial intelligence assistant, giving owners the ability to ask the glasses for additional information about what’s in front of them.
This week, EssilorLuxottica agreed to buy US streetwear brand Supreme for $1.5 billion. People close to the business said the eyewear group aims to launch a new version of Supreme’s smart sunglasses in partnership with Meta to better target young consumers.
Meta and rival Apple are racing to produce unobtrusive augmented reality glasses that could one day replace the smartphone as the next-generation computing device, but the technology is still in its infancy and consumers have been reluctant to wear the cumbersome devices on their faces.
Zuckerberg said at the April earnings call that the company’s outlook for smart glasses has “improved quite a bit” and that it’s one of the “bigger areas” the company is investing in for its AR and virtual reality division, Reality Labs.
He previously said that glasses would need “full holographic displays to be a big market,” but that the success of the Meta Ray-Bans proved otherwise.
“If we want everyone to be able to use wearable AI, I think glasses are a little bit different than phones or watches in that people are going to want very different designs,” he added. “So I think our approach to partnering with leading eyewear brands will help us serve a larger portion of the market.”
EssilorLuxottica, created seven years ago by the complex €50 billion merger of Italian billionaire Leonardo Del Vecchio’s Luxottica Group and French lens manufacturer Essilor, has steadily grown to become the world’s largest eyewear manufacturer.
In recent years, the core of its strategy has been the acquisition of technology and engineering companies. In 2022, the group acquired Israeli hearing technology startup Nuance Hearing to develop glasses equipped with its acoustic beam technology.
This week, EssilorLuxottica also took an 80 percent stake in Heidelberg Engineering, a German company specializing in eye surgery technology, as part of its push into the medical field.