There’s yet another power player entering the smart glasses space, and it’s ready to deliver on the promise of in-lens display specs. You see what I did there? Deliver? Sorry, that’s the best I got—I asked my Meta Ray-Bans to help write another joke, but they started playing Spotify instead. No, but seriously, Amazon is developing smart glasses, according to a report from The Information, and they sound like they’re designed specifically to tackle Meta and its rumored-to-be Hypernova glasses.
According to The Information, Amazon’s smart glasses (slated for release in late 2026 or early 2027) will come in two flavors: delivery and not delivery. The delivery variety, reportedly codenamed “Amelia” on an internal level, is designed for Amazon’s workers and specifically meant to help sort and deliver packages. You’ve probably pieced together from that use case that these smart glasses have a display. What that display does is anyone’s guess, but if I had to take a stab, I’d say it’s capable of using computer vision to overlay information onto real objects. Amazon was also previously reported to be looking into how it can use its smart glasses for delivery, allowing drivers to see navigation overlaid on an in-lens display.
I’ve never worked in a fulfillment center before, so I can’t opine on whether a capability like that would be useful or not, but given the never-ending strife between factory workers and Amazon, I’m willing to wager that smart glasses aren’t exactly a priority among the people who work at its warehouses. It would, however, generate tons of data that could be useful in fine-tuning a separate product that Amazon is reportedly working on: consumer-level smart glasses.
That side of things, according to The Information, is codenamed “Jayhawk” and will allegedly have microphones, speakers, cameras, and a monocular color display—for anyone that doesn’t speak “smart glasses,” monocular means a display in one eye. They sound fairly similar to what Meta is reportedly working on (and potentially close to releasing) with its Hypernova glasses. I don’t think it would be a massive leap to assume that these glasses would also have a dose of Alexa as well. Voice assistants are still a big part of any pair of smart glasses as companies work on developing a UI that doesn’t involve shouting out loud at an object on your head.
In one way, Jayhawk would mark a foray into the smart glasses space, but in another, it could be considered Amazon suddenly remembering that it’s already (kind of) in that space. Amazon has been selling its Echo Frames glasses since 2020, and while they don’t have cameras, they do have Alexa built in, making them a (granted, less popular) competitor to Meta’s Ray-Bans. Amazon clearly feels like it’s ready to take the next step, though, and while it didn’t seem to have much luck muscling out Meta with its display-less glasses, maybe this round will be different. And if it doesn’t? Well, the good news is you never have to use them, which is more than I can say for Amazon’s poor warehouse workers.