EssilorLuxottica and Meta: Is the romance starting to crack?

Six years of collaboration, seven million pairs of glasses sold, and a 10-year extension signed in 2024. On paper, the alliance between Meta and Essilor Luxottica is an unprecedented industrial success in smart glasses. However, behind the sales records, strategic differences are said to have emerged. On one side, a tech giant ready to flood the market to impose its ecosystem. On the other, the world's leading eyewear group, forced to protect its margins and its reputation.

The marriage looked perfect, but the tension was there from the start. Before the first Ray-Ban Stories launched in 2021, Mark Zuckerberg pushed for an entry price around $250, convinced volume had to come first. EssilorLuxottica refused to discount its iconic frames. After weeks of negotiations, a compromise was reached at $299. It would become the template for what followed.

Four years later, the partners are claiming seven million pairs sold in 2025, boosted by the arrival of Meta AI from the second generation launched in 2023. The numbers are strong enough that the collaboration was extended by ten years in 2024. But the mood has hardened: Meta wants to turn these glasses into a mass gateway to its products, while EssilorLuxottica sees its historic model tightening under the weight of technology.

The regulatory breaking point

The discord has a codename: "Name Tag". Mark Zuckerberg wants to integrate facial recognition to identify passers-by by cross-referencing Instagram and Facebook profiles. For EssilorLuxottica, it is a major reputational risk. The group refuses to let its frames, led by Ray-Ban, become tools for social identification, with the prospect of customer backlash and explosive regulatory exposure. As Europe tightens its rules on biometrics in 2026, this project could even block any commercial rollout on the continent.

At the same time, Apple is moving forward with the opposite strategy: its future devices would lean on encryption and privacy. The brand has anchored part of its strategy in protecting privacy, which has become an argument associated with a sophisticated clientele.

When AI eats into margins

Beyond ethics, the conflict is also about the numbers. Meta, whose model relies on data and the software ecosystem more than on hardware, is pushing for low prices and is even proposing to double production capacity to twenty million, even thirty million, units this year. EssilorLuxottica argues the opposite. Francesco Milleri has promised investors that operating profit will grow at the same pace as revenue over five years, while steering a pivot toward medical technology, which requires solid margins.

The bill is already showing: adjusted gross margin fell by 2.6 points in 2025, to 60.9% of revenue. AI glasses alone account for two-thirds of that impact. The latest Ray-Ban Display models, sold for $799, carry unprecedented costs in electronic components and factory expansion, which volumes do not yet fully offset. AlphaValue analysts warn that if the business shifts to the mass market, operating margin could slide from 16.7% to around 10%. Doubts that have already had consequences in the market: EssilorLuxottica shares have fallen by nearly 30% in three months.

In this context, Meta's stake in EssilorLuxottica, at least 3% announced last year, looks less like a symbol of confidence than a step toward gradual control.

A crowded market where elegance is no longer enough

The days when the duo had the field to itself are well and truly over. IDC forecasts annual smart-glasses growth of more than 29%, nearing thirty million units by 2029, a market valued at $10.8bn, which naturally fuels interest. Google is teaming up with Warby Parker to get back in the race, Apple is accelerating development of its own AI glasses, and OpenAI has recruited Jony Ive, the iPhone's designer, for a hardware push. Facing this competition, the two partners are trying to broaden the ecosystem, with talks under way with Prada on a joint AI collection. But that expansion does not resolve the fundamental contradiction. By seeking to impose widespread biometric identification and mass production, Meta risks pushing the world leader in optics toward the exit.