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As we approach a new year, it’s time for our annual ritual of synthesizing the lessons from the past twelve months and formulating the outlook for the next twelve. 2025 was an incremental year for spatial computing, which continues a gradual uphill ascent toward mainstream traction.
2025 highlights include XR’s ongoing convergence with AI, inflections in non-dispay AI glasses, the rise of video display glasses, and the unveiling of the long-awaited Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses. Meanwhile, roadmap signals emerged from players ranging from Snap to Apple.
All these approaches – video passthrough AR, optical seethrough AR, and non-display smartglasses – represent form-factor divergence and diversification. That’s a good thing, as XR should include varied formats that are purpose-built and use-case-driven – a key trend in 2025.
With that backdrop, what will 2026 look like in spatial computing? Aligned with the broader predictions of our research arm, ARtillery Intelligence, we’ve devised 5 predictions for 2026. We’ll break them down here weekly, starting with Prediction #2: Your face is the next AI battleground
Prediction 1: AI’s Bubble Bursts… But the Value to XR Lasts
Prediction 2: Your Face is the Next AI Battleground
Prediction 3: 2026 Sets the Table for 2027 Inflection
Prediction 4: Android XR Unlocks Spatial Scale
Prediction 5: Video Display Glasses Pull Ahead
Annual Predictions: 2025 Lessons, 2026 Outlook
Unrecognized Value
Building from our previous prediction, one of AI’s next frontiers will be your face. This is part of the broader principle of AI’s unrecognized value in the physical world. Most of AI’s outpouring of investment and excitement over the past two years has been confined to digital domains.
For example, Generative AI and large language models mostly operate within the reaches of the web, appverse, and things that happen on your screen(s). Potentially greater value resides in the physical world. Once AI can tap into and train itself on all that data, the value creation will be immense.
To be fair, this isn’t a new concept, covered in fields ranging from IoT, to digital twins, to Nvidia’s Omniverse efforts. But when it comes to high-value consumer-facing AI, the fact remains that most of it involves data that’s been trained on/from the web, and user interfaces that involve 2D screens.
Bringing this back to your face, if AI can see what you see, it can be a more powerful tool to gain contextual awareness and elevate intelligence. That is the best way to augment human intelligence – more so than sensors that reside elsewhere, such as on your wrist or in your pocket.
2026 Predictions: AI’s Bubble Bursts… But the Value to XR Lasts
Face Forward
Importantly, the opportunity is for your face to not just be data collection point but the consumption point. That intelligence gathered, trained, processed, and returned can take shape in AR interfaces that inform you about your surroundings. And as we’ve learned, that can be visual or audible.
The remaining question is who’s primed to win that coveted spot on your face. Meta is ahead in terms of progress in AI-driven smart glasses. But it could have trust issues with data collection. Apple has ample ammunition to catch up to Meta – and fewer trust issues – but it has stumbled in AI.
Google sits between them with the best of both worlds, given fewer trust issues (albeit some), and greater AI. The latter is Google’s ace in the hole, considering that Gemini’s ongoing advancements will be sewn into Android XR – thus tapping into Google’s extensive and time-tested knowledge graph.
Meanwhile, Snap will be in a prime position in 2026, given that consumer Spectacles’ AR chops will exceed all the above. In other words, all other consumer AR glasses in 2026 will offer “flat AR,” while Spectacles offer dimensional (SLAM) AR, which so far is mostly limited to enterprise devices.
Looking Back on 2025 Predictions: How’d We Do?
Concrete Prediction
Ray-Ban Meta Smartglasses (RBMS) were the world’s introduction to faceworn AI at scale. 2026 unit sales will exceed 4.8 million – a substantial but decelerated growth rate from 2025 as the market approaches a saturation point relative to its current demand ceiling.
Meta Ray-Ban Display Glasses (MRBD) – carrying the same principle but evolved into visuals – will sell a much lesser volume due to its price tag, coming in at 30,000 units for the year. In both cases, Meta will warm up the market, leading up to a 2027 inflection (covered in the next prediction).
We’ll pause there and circle back next week with another 2025 prediction. Meanwhile, see the full report. And to calibrate our aptitude and track record in projecting XR market outcomes, see our recent article evaluating last year’s predictions.