With Apple pivoting from headsets to smart glasses and Meta betting billions on wearable AI, EssilorLuxottica races to scale production to 10 million units.

EssilorLuxottica — owner of Ray-Ban, Oakley and Persol — has teamed up with Meta Platforms to manufacture and sell AI-equipped eyewear, wearable tech that Silicon Valley giants have extolled as the next 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 Executive Officer Francesco Milleri said 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.”