Meta Pauses European Rollout of Smart Ray-Bans as Americans Lap Up Supply

By Joshua Kirby

Facebook-owner Meta said it will delay rolling out its latest smartglasses model to countries outside the U.S. amid high demand from American customers.

The Ray-Ban Display smartglasses, developed in partnership with Franco-Italian eyewear group EssilorLuxottica, had been planned to be made available for sale in Canada, France, the U.K. and Italy early this year. But soaring demand and limited stock mean that rollout will be delayed, Meta communications manager Lisa Brown Jaloza wrote in a blog post on the tech group's website.

"Since launching [the model] last fall, we've seen an overwhelming amount of interest, and as a result, product waitlists now extend well into 2026," Brown Jaloza wrote. "Because of this unprecedented demand and limited inventory, we've decided to pause our planned international expansion."

"We'll continue to focus on fulfilling orders in the U.S. while we re-evaluate our approach to international availability," she said.

EssilorLuxottica, which makes Ray-Bans as well as Oakleys and other brands of eyewear, didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. The company last year said its partnership with Meta had boosted sales and that it expected to book further acceleration in its top line as more consumers take to glasses integrated with technology.

The Meta Ray-Ban Display was launched in the U.S. last year, furthering a growing boom in wearable tech. The device can be used to take photographs and stream content and unlike previous smartglasses, the model features a small display that the wearer can see from the corner of his or her eye. The glasses are also linked to artificial-intelligence features, such as AI assistants, via users' smartphones.

"We continue to lead the industry in AI glasses," Meta's founder and chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, told investors at the company's most recent trading update.

A pickup in AI functionality has driven a spurt in wearable tech in recent years. Google plans to release its own pair of glasses powered by its large-language model Gemini this year, while ChatGPT owner OpenAI is set to release its own family of AI devices by 2027.

Write to Joshua Kirby at joshua.kirby@wsj.com; @joshualeokirby

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

January 06, 2026 09:34 ET (14:34 GMT)