Snap is partnering with Nvidia, Amazon Web Services and Salesforce as part of an effort to bring its $2,000 Specs augmented reality glasses to the enterprise market.
Evan Spiegel, Snap’s CEO, characterized the initiative as tied to the company’s broader effort to help people “understand that Specs is a computer, not a pair of smart glasses for taking photos.”
When Snap revealed the Specs AR glasses in June, with a $2,195 price tag and $200 refundable deposit, the company pitched the device as catering to the public instead of developers. Although AR and related virtual reality technologies have improved over the years, devices like Microsoft’s HoloLens and Meta’s Quest-branded VR headsets have failed to become breakout hits.
Spiegel said the bulkiness of those older devices were a major hindrance, and said his company’s Specs AR glasses will be better suited for tasks like helping field technicians troubleshoot equipment problems by viewing digital instructions, and interacting with workers.
To date, Snap’s success has been in the consumer market. The company is hoping that a partnership with the likes of Nvidia can change that.
“They’ve got an open-source XR AI platform that a number of businesses are already building on top of,” Spiegel said. “The goal with both Salesforce and Nvidia is to make it really easy for businesses to get the benefits of those agentic platforms.”
Snap is also debuting a consumer-oriented AI service dubbed Specs Intelligence that’s like a digital assistant that can do tasks across the AR glasses as well as iPhones and Mac computers. Spiegel said the company hasn’t determined specific pricing details yet, but it will include a free tier and “different price points” depending on usage.
The company’s latest AI-related foray comes as debate heats up in the broader technology market about safety, and whether foundation model leaders like Anthropic and OpenAI should slow the pace of development.
Spiegel said, “these are concerns that have been raised for a long time.”
“It’s really important that we coordinate an international and thoughtful response,” Spiegel said. “It’s really important that regulators and policymakers consider actual potential harms rather than imagined harms, and so that’s why I think it’s going to be really important for a thoughtful and international group to really get together on this.”
Read the original article here