Meta Connect 2025: What to expect and how to watch (techcrunch.com)

Meta Connect 2025 kicks off Wednesday evening with a Mark Zuckerberg keynote and is widely expected to center on new AI-powered wearables — notably a leaked Ray-Ban “Hypernova” model with a right-lens heads-up display, cameras, microphones and an onboard AI assistant controlled by a wristband gesture device — plus a sport-focused Oakley collaboration (Spheara-style) featuring a single centered camera. Leaks and Meta’s prior releases suggest these devices tightly integrate sensors, always-on audio/vision capture and local/edge AI for contextual experiences aimed at runners, bikers and everyday users. VR hardware updates are less certain; an ultralight Quest follow-up is reportedly scheduled for 2026. For the AI/ML community, Connect feels consequential because it’s Meta’s first major developer-facing show since launching Meta Superintelligence Labs (MSL) under Alexandr Wang and after LlamaCon. Expect potential updates on MSL’s roadmap and how Meta plans to fuse large-model capabilities with sensor-rich wearable inputs. Technical implications include expanded multimodal datasets from wearables, increased emphasis on on-device inference and privacy-preserving pipelines, new APIs for contextual AI, and developer sessions (including Reality Labs researchers) that will outline how these devices could reshape mobile and ambient computing. The keynote and developer tracks are livestreamed (including via Meta Quest/Horizon), making technical details accessible to builders and researchers tracking the next wave of AI-enabled hardware.