Everything Announced at Meta Connect

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Happy Thursday.

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The current thing in tech and business is everything announced at Meta Connect.

Today’s Lineup

Enclosure Co-Founders Shalev and Romi Lifshitz at 11:50 AM
Public Co-Founder & Co-CEO Leif Abraham at 12:00 PM
TypeSafe Co-Founder & CEO Diogo Almeida at 12:10 PM
Solcoa Co-Founder & CEO Hooman Reza Nezhad at 12:20 PM
SemiAnalysis Member of Technical Staff Jordan Nanos at 12:30 PM
Pioneer Labs Co-Founder & CEO Erika Alden DeBenedictis at 12:40 PM

Run of Show

Everything Announced at Meta Connect

What a banger Meta Connect was. Really tight one hour keynote, a bunch of live demos with no mistakes, and most importantly a bunch of products that meet people where they are and deliver tomorrow’s technology amid today’s constraints. The pitch for Muse is really simple, a bunch of personal AI agent features, but wrapped in a cute package that doesn’t fear-monger, isn’t going to take anyone’s job, and definitely isn’t going to kill everyone. It was pretty unthinkable that you could actually shift the vibes here given how severe the anti-AI sentiment has been, but it’s working. The NYT, which just yesterday was having deeply critical conversations about AI doom, loves muse.

This sums up the vibes dichotomy best:

There have been a few strikes for Meta over the past two years. The vertical AI slop app Vibes quickly disappeared, the core Meta chat app never took off or found differentiation, models have been lagging the frontier for a while, but with Muse, they finally found something that fits nicely within their competitive strengths.

Meta has scaled and secure systems, handles WhatsApp encryption, can serve private VMs to millions of users without losing sleep over costs.
They have distribution to continually educate people about features and benefits of Muse through big ad placements across the family of apps.
No one needs their personal AI agent to solve a millennium prize problem, or secure their enterprise infrastructure. It’s notable that they didn’t announce their new “watermelon” model at Connect, they don’t need to. Personal AI agent users don’t care about, or even understand, benchmarks. Just update the model behind the scenes and don’t worry about sharing specifications with users.
They also already have a business model heavily aligned with this type of use: advertising. Small businesses will jump at the opportunity to sponsor suggested workflows, or even just rank higher as a potential decision point (like the iOS app store).

The Verge is reporting that the vibes internally at Meta are still off, but it seems like that has to shift soon. Last year, the company was still pivoting away from the hard metaverse bet, the AI strategy was scattered, they were going after massive data center projects, working on coding models, teasing becoming a neocloud or compute reseller. It was hard to see a clear line so I could imagine that would be frustrating internally. Today, it feels pretty easy to align all efforts around the thing that’s working “personal superintelligence” and you can already see that with the devices. The glasses that were sort of a niche peripheral, now have a bunch of new ways to compete in broader markets and stand out from “GoPro on your face” positioning.

This is all good news, and it’s reflected in the timeline. I, of course, am even more excited by the new VR glasses. It’s exactly what everyone has been asking for. John Carmack was pounding the table at Meta to release a headset that was 100 grams for $100. Now with inflation, the price point was never going to happen, but $1,299 is still way cheaper than the Apple Vision Pro, so a huge win there. I’m extremely excited for this product. As Palmer Luckey called out in the promotion video, “you can do DisplayPort over USB-C” - that means you’ll be able to plug in a laptop or probably even a PS5 and have a theater quality screen with close to zero latency. They moved the compute power to a puck you wear on your belt (controversial when Apple did it, but I personally love the strategy, glad they copied this). The only two drawbacks that I can see is that it doesn’t come out until spring of 2027, and the resolution seems to be around half of the Vision Pro. I don’t think it will actually look worse, I think the visual fidelity will be very, very close, but we’ll have to see. Excited to try it.

Muse Updates

Muse is getting more ways to communicate, including real-time voice conversations and live video chat. With Meta’s AI glasses you’ll also be able to communicate directly with Muse. Muse will also get its own email address, which you can email with or let it use to complete tasks.

Muse also announced new connections for shopping, travel, and work including Walmart, Best Buy, Gap, Instacart, GitHub, and more.

Meta VR Glasses

The biggest hardware update, especially from people’s reactions on the timeline, was around Meta’s VR glasses. Instead of the traditional headset strapped around your head these wear like a normal pair of glasses.

Some of the use cases for it include using it as a virtual screen for work, talk with Meta AI, or watch movies. Meta also demoed Hologram, a digital version of yourself that can appear in video calls.

They will launch sometime next Spring and will be priced at $1,299 (noticeably more affordable than SPECS.)

Muse Charm

Meta also teased Muse Charm. According to Mark Gurman, it’s “a dedicated AI hardware device that sits in the palm of your hand. It can be worn with a wrist strap, has an OLED screen, 5G and was developed by Apple’s former top interface design executive.”

Ray-Ban Meta Audio

The Ray-Ban Meta Audio is the company’s first audio-only smart glasses. Meta says they are the slimmest and lightest frames yet. Priced at $349, the glasses will be available later next month.

Clip Spotlight: Affirm CEO Max Levchin says removing humans from shopping entirely would be "a loss to humanity."

"It's very clear we'll all have agents doing our chores for us."

"I happen to believe that quite a lot of shopping isn't actually a chore. In fact, it's a form of entertainment."

"So human in the loop will not just be a requirement, it will be a loss to humanity if we're not allowed or if we're not participating in some of the shopping choices."