Chinese technology giant Alibaba (BABA) has announced plans to launch a pair of smart glasses powered by artificial intelligence (A.I.) in a direct challenge to Meta Platforms (META).
Alibaba said that its “Quark AI Glasses” will be launched in China by the end of 2025 with hardware powered by the firm’s Qwen large language model and it’s A.I. assistant Quark.
The technology giant is one of the leaders in China’s A.I. space, aggressively launching new models and applications to compete against U.S. counterparts such as OpenAI and Meta.
Many companies are moving into wearable technology, specifically smart glasses, as the next frontier in computing.
Quark, which was updated earlier this year, is currently available as an app in China. Alibaba is pushing into hardware as a way to distribute the app more widely, said the company.
The Quark A.I. glasses are Alibaba’s response to Meta’s already available smart glasses that were designed in collaboration with Ray-Ban.
However, Alibaba is also competing with Chinese consumer electronics firm Xiaomi, which earlier this year released its own A.I. glasses.
Alibaba said its glasses will support hands-free calling, music streaming, real-time language translation, and meeting transcription. The glasses also feature a built-in camera.
The Chinese tech company added that users will also be able to use a navigation service via the smart glasses, pay with Alipay, and compare prices on Taobao, its Chinese e-commerce platform.
The price of Alibaba’s smart glasses has not yet been announced.
BABA stock is up 41% this year and currently trading at $120.03 U.S. per share.
