Meta investment provides boost for Essilor

Bloomberg reported that Meta Platforms had acquired just under 3% of the Ray-Ban maker Essilor/Luxottica, a stake worth more than £2.6 billion at market prices.

The Paris-listed company EssilorLuxottica makes Prada, Ray-Ban and Oakley frames as well as making [Essilor] recent aquisitions in the Europe for Heidelberg and more recently for Optegra 

Vogue Business reported that industry sources had been speculating for months that the Silicon Valley company was considering the investment.  

Meta launched its first pair of Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses in 2021 and introduced  the second generation in 2023. The AI glasses enable wearers to react to their surroundings, take pictures and videos, listen to music, make calls and send messages, all without touching their phones. 

The smart glasses are the top-selling product in 60 per cent of Ray-Ban stores in the regional area, which includes Europe, the Middle East and Africa, said the group’s CFO Stefano Grassi during the company’s earnings call at the end of 2024. Around the same time, the companies announced they were extending their partnership into the next decade “to write the history of wearables together”.  

At Meta’s Connect conference last September, Mark Zuckerberg said the company had initially struggled to meet demand for AI glasses because it was much higher than expected.  

Zuckerberg recognises how important it is that the glasses are attractive to consumers, commenting previously that EssilorLuxottica “brings a huge amount that people in our world, the tech world, probably don’t necessarily see”. 

In June, EssilorLuxottica and Meta announced the launch of Oakley Meta, a new category of AI glasses, designed to be compatible with prescription lenses.  

Meta opened a new £12 million audio research lab in Cambridge earlier this month as part of its development of AI glasses. Meta met the Chancellor Rachel Reeves earlier this month, The Independent newspaper reported. 

Shares in the eyewear company EssilorLuxottica rose by more than 5%