Alibaba jumps into smart glasses with Quark AI eyewear

Alibaba is officially getting into the smart eyewear game.

At the World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) in Shanghai, the tech giant showcased its first pair of AI-powered glasses, dubbed the Quark AI glasses after its flagship AI assistant.

Ready to ship this year

Alibaba confirmed that product development is already complete, with plans to officially launch the glasses later this year, though it stopped short of sharing specific release dates or pricing.

Song Gang, head of the smart terminal business at Alibaba’s Intelligent Information group, pitched the hardware at the event as a natural next step, calling AI glasses humanity's future "pair of eyes and ears."

This marks Alibaba’s first proprietary hardware in the category. The Chinese market is already crowded, with local AR heavyweights like Rokid and Xreal rolling out new hardware in recent months. Earlier this year, Alibaba also teamed up with Hong Kong-based RayNeo to supply AI software for its glasses.

Why it matters

Putting the Quark assistant directly onto users' faces shows that big tech sees personal wearables as the prime real estate for multimodal AI. Looking up information or asking questions through a first-person point of view is much more intuitive than pulling out a phone, provided the hardware doesn't feel heavy or overheat.

For developers and rivals, Alibaba building its own glasses changes the competitive landscape in China. Pure-play hardware startups will face tougher competition from a tech giant with deep pockets and proprietary foundation models. It will also be worth watching how Alibaba balances selling its own glasses while supplying AI to partners like RayNeo.