Meta revives smartwatch project and targets 2026 debut

Meta (META) is reviving its smartwatch project and aiming for a 2026 debut.

The company restarted work on its “Malibu 2” device, a watch with health tracking and a built in Meta AI assistant.

The project was shelved in 2022 during cost cuts inside Reality Labs. Now it is back.

This is not Meta’s first attempt.

Around five years ago, the company explored multiple smartwatch designs, including versions with three cameras. That effort died when Reality Labs went into retrenchment mode. Since then, the division has poured billions into VR headsets and smart glasses. Meanwhile, wearable AI has gone from buzzword to product category.

Meta’s smart glasses, built with EssilorLuxottica under the Ray-Ban brand, shipped millions of units last year. That is a consumer hardware beachhead. Now Meta wants the wrist.

The disruption behind the news: This is Meta building an always on AI layer for your body.

Smart glasses are situational.

You put them on when you leave the house.

A smartwatch is intimate and constant.

It captures heart rate, sleep, steps, stress.

Pair that with Meta AI and you get a feedback loop that runs 24 hours a day. Health data trains the assistant. The assistant nudges behavior. That changes how Meta competes.

Right now, Apple owns the premium smartwatch market. Google and Samsung split the Android side. But none of them tie wearables as tightly to social graphs and immersive hardware as Meta can.

Here is the business impact. If Meta sells even 5 million watches in year one at $300 average selling price, that is $1.5B in hardware revenue. More important, it is 5 million new daily AI endpoints feeding user data back into Meta’s models. That improves ad targeting and personalization across Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp. The cost curve on AI inference keeps falling. The value of proprietary behavioral data keeps rising.

This also lowers switching costs for Meta’s ecosystem. If you own Ray-Ban Meta glasses and a Meta watch, you are less likely to jump to an iPhone plus Apple Watch combo. Hardware lock in has been Apple’s playbook for a decade. Meta is copying it with an AI twist.

There is risk. Reality Labs has burned more than $40B since 2020. Another device flop would punish the stock. And cannibalization is real. Launch too many wearables too fast and consumers freeze. That is why Meta reportedly delayed its Phoenix mixed reality glasses to 2027.

But Meta has learned something. The winning wearable is not the most futuristic one. It is the one that fits into daily habits and rides an existing behavior curve. Watches already sell in the tens of millions annually. Adding AI is an upgrade, not a leap. Meta also recently expanded Nvidia partnership with millions of new AI chips.

What to watch next

First, price.

If Meta undercuts Apple by $100 to $150, adoption could move fast among younger users already deep in Instagram.

Second, battery life.

If the AI assistant drains power in under a day, this dies.

Third, integration.

If the watch works seamlessly with Ray-Ban Meta glasses and future AR devices, Meta creates a multi device AI mesh around the user. Another question to ask here is: Can AI glasses replace our phones?

Over the next 6 to 24 months, watch whether Meta talks less about the metaverse and more about health insights, daily coaching, and AI companions. That shift would signal a pivot from speculative VR to practical AI wearables.

This is Meta smartwatch is betting that the next computing platform is not on your desk or in your pocket. It is on your face and your wrist. If that bet works, Apple’s dominance starts to crack. If it fails, Reality Labs becomes a permanent drag on the stock. There is no middle ground. Meta (META) has a Disruption Score of 4. Click here to learn how we calculate the Disruption Score. 

Meta is also part of the Disruption Aristocrats, our quarterly list of the world’s top disruptive stocks.