EssilorLuxottica extends smart glasses partnership with Meta

MILAN (Reuters) -EssilorLuxottica said on Tuesday it had extended its partnership with Meta Platforms by agreeing a 10-year deal to continue developing smart eyewear.

"The incredible work we've done with Meta, still in its early stages, has already proven to be an important milestone in our journey to making glasses the gateway to the connected world," EssilorLuxottica CEO Francesco Milleri said.

In the press release there was no reference to the possibility of Meta buying a stake in the eyewear maker. In July the head of EssilorLuxottica said the tech giant had informed him that it might invest in the company.

Previously the Wall Street Journal reported that the two companies had discussed Meta taking a 5% stake in the Franco-Italian group.

EssilorLuxottica and Meta have been collaborating since 2019, creating two generations of Ray-Ban branded smart glasses.

Although the launch of the first smart glasses struggled to gain traction among consumers, the latest version, introduced in late 2023, has sold more units in a few months than the previous ones did in two years.

Ray-Ban Meta's smart eyewear allows consumers to make phone calls, listen to music and take photos just by pressing a button on top of the right temple of the glasses. A multimodal artificial intelligence (AI) function was also added in May for U.S. and Canadian customers only.

"I'm proud of the work we've done with EssilorLuxottica so far, and I'm excited about our long-term roadmap ahead. We have the opportunity to turn glasses into the next major technology platform, and make it fashionable in the process," Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a statement.

(Reporting by Gianluca Lo Nostro and Elisa Anzolin; Editing by Tom Hogue and Louise Heavens)