Snap is betting $3.5 billion on AR glasses that businesses can use as CEO Evan Spiegel sees a post-smartphone era

For more than a decade, some of the world’s biggest technology companies have spent billions trying to put computers on people’s faces—to minimal success.

But Snap CEO Evan Spiegel revealed another bet on glasses in June, this time with a $2,195 pair of augmented-reality (AR) specs that he says could usher in a post-smartphone era.

After nearly 20 years, the iPhone has made consumers ready to think differently about computing, he told CNBC at the time, arguing information can be displayed in a person’s vision without them needing to pull out a phone to look down at a screen.

During Snap’s Q2 2026 earnings call last month, Spiegel claimed there has been a “huge amount of interest” in preorders for the new AR glasses, but gave no exact numbers.

It’s not Snap’s first effort at glasses, which haven’t paid off. The........

© Fortune