Look out, Meta Ray-Bans! These AI glasses just raised over $1M in pre-orders in 3 days

Follow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google.

ZDNET’s key takeaways

• Rokid Glasses are a competitor to Meta Ray-Bans but offer several more advanced features.
• The company launched a pre-order marketing campaign via Kickstarted and raised over $1 million in pre-orders in the first 3 days.
• The AI glasses are likely to appeal to tech early adopters who value features over multiple style selections.

The popular Meta Ray-Bans smart glasses are about to get a lot more competition, including from big tech companies like Samsung and Google. However, Rokid Glasses are shaping up to be one of the up-and-coming products to watch in this space. On August 26, Rokid launched a Kickstarter campaign to try to nail down $20,000 in pre-orders for its smart glasses by October 10. Less than 72 hours later, Rokid Glasses had already cleared over $1 million in pre-orders.

I’m not sure anyone in the tech industry is all that surprised. 

The Rokid Glasses combine the three best features of Meta Ray-Bans — convenient photography, ear buds-like audio, and a quick-access AI assistant — with a head-up display like the ones you’ll find in AR glasses such as the Even Realities G1 and Brilliant Labs Halo. 

Beyond just the heads-up display, the Rokid Glasses also offer several other upgrades over the Meta Ray-Bans:

• Support for 89 languages (compared to 4)
• Shoot photos in horizontal or vertical mode (rather than just vertical)
• 210 mAh battery (compared to 154 mAh)
• Native ChatGPT support (compared to the Meta’s Llama AI model)
• Audio Memo for notes and reminders (no equivalent feature)
• Magnetized pop-in lenses (compared to traditional lenses)

With all of that tech inside, the Rokid Glasses weigh 49g — the same as Meta Ray-Bans — and have a very similar physical footprint to the flagship Wayfarer style of Meta Ray-Bans in black.

Also: 5 Meta Ray-Ban upgrades I want to see on September 17

The Rokid Glasses will retail for $599, compared to $299 to $379 for Meta Ray-Bans, $299 for Brilliant Labs Halo, $599 for Even Realities G1, and $399-$499 for the more recent Meta Oakley smart glasses. But for the Kickstarter, Rokid is offering the first 2,000 backers a 20% discount at $479. Rokid says it will ship the final product in November 2025. 

To be clear, this is more of a pre-order marketing campaign than a Kickstarter campaign. Rokid is a Chinese company with a presence in Silicon Valley and has been building smart speakers and smart glasses since 2014. More recently, the company has been focused on more bulky and full-featured AR glasses such as the Rokid Max 2 and partnering with over 200 museums in China to integrate immersive digital content.  The company has been giving demos of the Rokid Glasses since CES in January 2025, where ZDNET first tried them. 

ZDNET spoke with Liang Guan, Rokid’s US General Manager based in Redwood City, California and Irene Long, Head of Global Operations based at the company’s headquarters in Hangzhou, China. Guan said that globally the company has already received orders for over 300,000 units of the Rokid Glasses. Since the US Kickstarter campaign only has about 1,900 orders as of September 1, the vast majority of the pre-orders are likely from partners and retailers.

Guan mentioned that there are different versions of the product for different markets, and that includes some different features as well. For example, the version for the Chinese market will include a wireless payment feature while the version for the US and global markets will include turn-by-turn navigation. Rokid expects both features to be very popular in their respective markets. Most of the other features are the same or similar across markets.

Long said, “At CES in January, our glasses were more like a prototype, and now they’re ready. And so mass production begins in October.” 

Meta has said it will unveil its next smart glasses products at its Meta Connect event at its Silicon Valley headquarters on September 17. The company is expected to launch its “Hypernova” glasses that will reportedly include a small color screen in one eye, a neural wristband to enable hand gestures, and will cost $800. Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said Meta is preparing to sell 150,000 – 200,000 units of these Hypernova glasses over the next two years. 

Also: Report: Samsung’s tri-fold phone, XR headset, and AI smart glasses to be revealed on Sep 29

However, Meta is also reportedly going to launch a successor to its audio-only Meta Ray-Ban glasses at Meta Connect with a number of upgrades — likely to match or exceed the capabilities of the Meta Oakley smart glasses released in summer 2025. The 3.0 version of Meta Ray-Bans are expected to retail between $300-$500 and the CEO of EssilorLuxotica (maker of Ray-Bans), Francesco Milleri, said that the company was preparing to scale up to sell 10 million units annually by the end of 2006. 

So the Rokid Glasses would sit right in between the two Meta products — more capable than the audio-only glasses but not quite as advanced as Hypernova. They also don’t have the brand power of Ray-Bans, Meta’s partnerships for wide retail distribution in the US, or the variety of different styles that the Meta Ray-Bans do. Nevertheless, among tech early adopters who want the most advanced features, Rokid Glasses are likely to be very competitive.