After Glasses, the Pendant: Meta Aims for AI Wearables to Boost Reality Labs

According to an internal memo seen by The Information, Meta is reportedly developing an AI-equipped pendant that it aims to begin testing within a year. The project is led by Alex Himel, vice president for wearable devices, and the company has not yet commented: it is prudent to consider the emerging rumors with a healthy degree of skepticism.

What the Memo Outlines

The document, according to reports, is based on three pillars: the pendant, an expanded range of AI glasses, and a business offering called Wearables for Work, designed for clients willing to pay for specific industry functions. The pendant would inherit the work of Limitless, the startup that Meta acquired at the end of 2025: its device could be attached to a shirt or worn around the neck to record and transcribe conversations. The new products, the memo states, will operate on Meta's Muse Spark model and on an unreleased agent called Hatch.

The sales goals are ambitious: Himel has set a target of 10 million wearable devices sold in the second half of 2026 and 6.8 million active monthly users by the end of the year. All of this is aimed at reversing the course of Reality Labs, the hardware division that has lost $4 billion in just the first quarter and over $60 billion since its inception.

Why Meta is Not Humane

The category of AI pendants has a not particularly encouraging history. Readers may recall the AI Pin from Humane, which debuted in 2024 amid scathing reviews and effectively disappeared within a year, with HP acquiring its assets for $116 million; another startup, Friend, spent over a million on advertising without finding an audience. Neither device provided enough utility to justify the expense and an additional gadget to wear.

However, Meta starts from a different position because it already has a functioning wearable business. In 2025, it sold over seven million Ray-Ban Meta glasses and controls about 82% of the smart glasses market. The pendant would therefore be a secondary form within an ecosystem with proven demand, from which Meta has gathered user feedback. The issue of privacy remains: a device that records conversations raises the same concerns already directed at camera glasses, in an even more intimate format, and in the European Union, where Meta is under scrutiny for DMA and GDPR, the regulatory framework may limit its dissemination.

For now, this is a memo, not an announcement, and an internal planning document indicates intentions rather than certainties. The real uncertainty is the same one that has sunk those who tried before: making environmental recording useful enough for someone to want to wear it, and reliable enough for those around to tolerate it.