In the span of eighteen months, AI wearables went from a punchline to a paradigm shift. The global wearable AI market hit $48.8 billion in 2025 and is on track to reach $61.5 billion this year — with projections of $359 billion by 2034. But the real story isn't in the revenue numbers. It's in what worked, what died spectacularly, and what nobody saw coming. Smart glasses outsold every forecast. A $700 AI pin became a $116 million fire sale. And a small Finnish ring company hit an $11 billion valuation. Here's where AI wearables actually stand in February 2026.
The Landscape Today
The AI wearable market has ruthlessly sorted itself. The winners share three traits: they look normal, cost under $500, and solve a specific problem. The losers tried to create new product categories from scratch without nailing the basics. The sector attracted over 14,500 investors across 27,000 funding rounds, averaging $25.7M per round — with combined investment exceeding $8 billion. The driving insight: AI in wearables has become invisible infrastructure. Devices stopped reacting and started anticipating behavior, predicting needs, and adapting in real time.
Smart Glasses Lead the Way
Meta Ray-Ban: The Undisputed Winner
EssilorLuxottica sold 7 million+ AI glasses in 2025 — up from 2 million total across 2023-2024 combined. That's a 3.5x year-over-year explosion. Smart glasses shipments rose 110% YoY in H1 2025, with AI-enabled models representing 78% of shipments. Analysts expect smart glasses sales to quadruple again in 2026.
The Ray-Ban Display, launched at Meta Connect 2025, is the first Ray-Ban with an integrated heads-up display and the Meta Neural Band — a neural wristband using EMG sensors for gesture control. Starting at $799, it delivers notification overlays, real-time navigation, live translation across four languages, and Meta AI that sees what you see. International launch was delayed to 2026 due to "unprecedented" US demand.
Google Project Aura: The Challenger
Google is making its biggest hardware bet since Pixel. Project Aura, built on Android XR, partners with XREAL for hardware and Warby Parker and Gentle Monster for design — a deliberate style-first approach. Specs include a 70-degree FOV, optical see-through, adaptive tinting, and gesture support. Expected at ~$1,000 in 2026. Google's three-tier strategy: audio glasses first, monocular display next, binocular glasses by 2027.
Snap Gets Serious
Snap spun its AR glasses into standalone company Specs Inc. in January 2026. Consumer launch planned for this year. The ecosystem has 400,000+ developers and 4M+ Lenses built, with deep integrations with OpenAI and Gemini for multimodal AI. Real-time transcription in 40+ languages and 3D object generation in Lenses make this a serious contender.
Smart glasses won because they solved the fundamental problem: nobody wants to wear something that makes them look like a cyborg. When the tech disappears into a pair of Ray-Bans, adoption follows.
The Graveyard & Hard Lessons
Humane AI Pin: The Biggest AI Hardware Failure
The Humane AI Pin launched in April 2024 at $700 plus $24/month. It was discontinued in February 2025 — less than one year after launch. Returns outpaced sales. Everything was panned: accuracy, projector, battery life, and the interaction model. Then came the battery fire risk warning.
HP acquired the assets for $116 million. The team became "HP IQ." Customers outside a 90-day window got nothing. All data permanently deleted. The company had raised $230M+ at an $850M valuation. The lesson: AI-first hardware without a proven interaction model is a death sentence. No amount of funding substitutes for product-market fit.
Rabbit R1: The Unlikely Comeback
Initially panned alongside the AI Pin, the Rabbit R1 pulled off a genuine turnaround. RabbitOS 2 in September 2025 transformed the device with a card-based UI, "Creations" vibe-coding tool, and enhanced AI. Units are selling in 50,000-unit batches. CEO Jesse Lyu confirmed next-gen hardware coming in 2026 — teased as a "three-in-one device." The deliberate decision to fix software before shipping new hardware deserves credit.
Apple Vision Pro: The Expensive Disappointment
Apple shipped ~390,000 units in 2024. Then sales plunged 95%. Production halted. An M5 upgrade in October 2025 had minimal impact. The barriers remain: $3,499, uncomfortable weight, sparse apps, only 13 countries. A cheaper model is expected in 2026, but the face-computer form factor hasn't found its audience.
Health AI: The Quiet Revolution
The FDA Opens the Floodgates
On January 6, 2026, the FDA released updated guidance easing regulation of digital health products. Wearables providing heart rate, blood pressure, and blood glucose readings get broader leeway for "wellness purposes." Over 1,250 AI-enabled medical devices have been FDA-authorized as of July 2025. Commissioner Marty Makary is explicitly pushing deregulation. This is a seismic policy shift.
Smart Rings Explode
Oura raised a $900M Series E at an $11 billion valuation — doubling in ten months. On track for $1B in 2025 sales, forecasting $1.5B+ in 2026, with 5.5M+ rings sold lifetime. Samsung Galaxy Ring 2 is expected with enhanced health monitoring. Budget alternatives thrive: RingConn Gen 2 Air ($199, no subscription), Amazfit Helio Ring, and Ultrahuman Ring Air. CES 2026 saw a flood of new entrants.
The CGM Race & Cardiac AI
Non-invasive continuous glucose monitoring remains the holy grail. PreEvnt isaac uses breath-based glucose monitoring and entered human clinical trials. Biolinq raised $100M for a wearable biosensor. No FDA-approved non-invasive CGM yet — expected 2025-2027. Meanwhile, Apple is developing Health+ AI Coach powered by LLMs, and Apple's Wearable Behavior Model flags health conditions with 92% accuracy from behavioral metrics alone.
On-Device AI Gets Real
The edge AI hardware market hit $26.1 billion in 2025, projected $58.9 billion by 2030. Edge computing delivers 30-50% efficiency gains over cloud while keeping data local. Samsung's neuromorphic chips enable continuous monitoring at minimal battery drain. Arm's Ethos-U65 microNPU delivers sub-milliwatt AI for wearable endpoints.
Neural interfaces are becoming real products. Wearable Devices partnered with Rokid for touchless neural control of AR glasses via the Mudra Link wristband, launching Q2 2026. Meta's Neural Band uses EMG for gesture control. The science fiction to shipping product gap is closing.
The most unexpected CES 2026 trend: always-on recording wearables. PLAUD NotePin S ($179) hit 1.5M devices sold — 20-hour recording, 64GB storage. SwitchBot AI MindClip, Mobvoi TicWatch Note, and a dozen more brands are pushing continuous transcription. A new "remember everything" category that raises deep questions about consent and surveillance.
Privacy in an Always-On World
Smart glasses with always-on cameras record bystanders without consent. Meta Ray-Ban's recording LED can be disabled or obscured. Harvard students demonstrated linking Ray-Ban footage to facial recognition to identify strangers. "Remember everything" wearables send continuous recordings to the cloud.
The legal framework is dangerously thin. Two-party consent laws vary by state. No single US agency governs AI-enabled physical devices. The FDA is loosening oversight while no comprehensive privacy legislation addresses AI wearables. Industry self-regulation is insufficient. A major privacy incident feels inevitable.
The paradox: the features that make AI wearables most useful — always-on sensing, contextual AI, continuous recording — are exactly what makes them most dangerous to privacy. The regulatory response hasn't caught up.
What's Coming Next
- Google Project Aura — Android XR smart glasses at ~$1,000
- Snap Specs consumer launch via standalone Specs Inc.
- Samsung Galaxy Ring 2 and Galaxy XR headset
- Meta Ray-Ban Display international expansion + Neural Band features
- Rabbit next-gen "three-in-one" device
- Cheaper Apple Vision headset
- Neural control glasses from Wearable Devices + Rokid (Q2 2026)
- Xpanceo smart contact lenses ($250M raised at $1.35B valuation)
The broader trends: style over tech, glasses over headsets, health AI going predictive, recording becoming default, neural interfaces arriving, and AI becoming invisible — less "hey assistant," more proactive ambient intelligence.
The Bottom Line
AI wearables found product-market fit in 2025 — but only under ruthlessly specific conditions. Winners look normal (Ray-Ban frames, not laser projectors). They cost under $500 (not $3,499). They solve a clear daily problem (health tracking, translation, navigation — not abstract "AI assistance").
The era of AI glasses has arrived. The era of face computers has not. Meta leads with 7M units. Oura leads rings at $11B. PLAUD created an entirely new "remember everything" category. Meanwhile, Humane is dead, Vision Pro is struggling, and the privacy reckoning is just beginning.
For businesses and developers: the wearable form factor matters more than the AI capability. The most sophisticated model is useless if the hardware sits in a drawer. The companies that understand this are winning. The ones that prioritized tech demos over daily utility are already gone.