Ray-Ban maker EssilorLuxottica says Meta smart glasses are boosting growth

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4 weeks ago

October 16, 2025

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Meta Ray-Ban Gen 2 AI glasses during the Meta Connect event in Menlo Park, California, US, on Wednesday, Sept. 17, 2025.

David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

EssilorLuxottica said a healthy amount of its revenue growth in the third quarter was due to its partnership with Meta, primarily from its Ray-Ban brand, to develop and sell smart glasses.

“Clearly there is a lift coming from Ray-Ban Meta wearables as a product category,” CFO Stefano Grassi said on the company’s third-quarter earnings call.

The European eyewear company said sales in in the quarter grew 11.7% year-over-year to 6.9 billion euros (about $8 billion) from 6.44 billion euros a year earlier. Of that growth, more than 4 percentage points came from wearables, which includes the Meta products, the company said.

In 2019, Meta and Luxottica inked a deal for Ray-Ban Meta branded smart glasses. Most recently, Luxottica’s Oakley brand has joined the partnership, with the debut in June of the Oakley Meta HSTN smart glasses. The companies are also working on a version of the smart glasses to be released under the Prada brand, CNBC reported in June.

Luxottica, which also oversees several popular brands like Vogue Eyewear and Persol, has been heavily pushing internet-connected glasses that work with Meta’s AI-powered digital assistant. The technology allows users to play music, take photos and perform other actions similar to how they would use smartphones.

“We believe that glasses will be the future,” Grassi said, adding that the wearables business is profitable. “Glasses will materially replace most of the functionality that today we have embedded into our phones.”

Grassi’s statement echoes sentiments expressed by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who said in July that “Personal devices like glasses that understand our context because they can see what we see, hear what we hear, and interact with us throughout the day will become our primary computing devices.”

A couple weeks into the fourth quarter, Grassi said he has “a good degree of optimism” for the period, in part because of the rollout of “all the new products that have been recently presented at the Meta Connect,” which will “all play a role in our fourth-quarter profile.”

At the Connect event in September, Zuckerberg revealed the $799 Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses, which have a small digital display that can be manipulated with an accompanying wristband powered by neural technology.

The company also unveiled new smart glasses, including the $499 Oakley Meta Vanguard glasses and the $379 Ray-Ban Meta (Gen 2) glasses.

Grassi said that Luxottica’s sales growth in North America in the third quarter had more to do with the Ray-Ban Meta glasses than the effects of tariffs, which led to higher prices for its products.

He said the company will be able to reach the 10 million unit capacity that it had originally planned to hit by the end of 2026 earlier than anticipated.

“The overall ecosystem of wearables is going to bring not only revenue associated with the hardware but also the revenue associated with lenses” and over time from services tied to AI.

EssilorLuxottica shares rose 2.4% on Thursday.

Meta isn’t the only tech giant getting into the burgeoning smart glasses market.

Alphabet announced in May a $150 million partnership with Warby Parker to develop smart glasses powered by Google’s Gemini AI digital assistant, while China’s Alibaba unveiled its smart glasses in July that utilize its Quark AI assistant. Apple and OpenAI are also reportedly developing smart glasses.

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Google and Disney reach deal to restore ESPN, ABC to YouTube TV

Published

11 hours ago

November 15, 2025

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Google and Disney reach deal to restore ESPN, ABC to YouTube TV

Alphabet and Disney on Friday announced that they’ve reached a deal to restore content from ABC and ESPN onto Google’s YouTube TV.

The deal comes after a two-week standoff between the two companies that started on Oct. 31. The stalemate resulted in numerous live sporting events, including college football games and two Monday Night Football games, being absent from the popular streaming service.

“We’re happy to share that we’ve reached an agreement with Disney that preserves the value of our service for our subscribers and future flexibility in our offers,” YouTube said in a statement. “Subscribers should see channels including ABC, ESPN and FX returning to their service over the course of the day, as well as any recordings that were previously in their Library. We apologize for the disruption and appreciate our subscribers’ patience as we negotiated on their behalf.”

Disney Entertainment’s co-chairs Alan Bergman and Dana Walden, along with ESPN Chairman Jimmy Pitaro, said in a statement that said the agreement reflects “how audiences choose to watch” entertainment.

“We are pleased that our networks have been restored in time for fans to enjoy the many great programming options this weekend, including college football,” they said.

More than 20 Disney-owned channels were removed from YouTube TV, which offered its subscribers $20 credits this week due to the dispute. In addition to ABC and ESPN, other networks that were unavailable included FX, NatGeo, Disney Channel and Freeform.

The main sticking point between the two companies was the rate Disney charges YouTube TV for its networks. Disney’s most valuable channel, ESPN, charges carriage of more than $10 a month per pay-TV subscriber, a higher fee than any other network in the U.S., CNBC previously reported.

It’s not the first conflict this year between YouTube and legacy media.

NBCUniversal content was nearly removed from YouTube TV before the companies reached an agreement in October, preventing shows like “Sunday Night Football” and “America’s Got Talent” from being pulled.

YouTube TV also found itself in a standoff with Fox in August that almost resulted in Fox News, Fox Sports and other Fox channels going dark on the service just before the start of the college football season. The two sides were able to strike a deal to prevent a blackout.

YouTube said it has the option for future program packages with Disney and other partners.

Disney said that access to a selection of live and on-demand programming from ESPN Unlimited, which includes content from ESPN+ and new content on its all-inclusive digital service coming later this year, will be available on YouTube TV to base plan subscribers at no additional cost by the end of 2026.

Here’s the memo that Disney executives sent to employees:

Team,

We’re pleased to share that we’ve reached a new agreement with YouTube TV, and all of our stations and networks are in the process of being restored to the service.

While this was a challenging moment, it ultimately led to a strong outcome for both consumers and for our company, with a deal that recognizes the tremendous value of the high-quality entertainment, sports, and news that fans have come to expect from Disney.

Over the past few years, we’ve led the way in creating innovative deals with key partners –
each one unique, and each designed to recognize the full value of our programming. This new agreement reflects that same creativity and commitment to doing what’s best for both our audiences and our business.

We’re proud of the work that went into this deal and grateful to everyone who helped make it happen — especially Sean Breen, Jimmy Zasowski, and the Platform Distribution team for their tireless commitment throughout this process.

Thank you all for your patience and professionalism over the past several weeks. As you all know, the media landscape continues to evolve quickly, which makes these types of negotiations complex. What hasn’t changed is our focus on the viewer. Our priority is — and will always be — delivering the best experiences and the best value to fans, and we’ll continue working closely with our partners to ensure we’re fulfilling that mission for our audiences.

We’re incredibly optimistic about what’s ahead and grateful to all of you for continuing to set the standard for entertainment around the world.

Alan, Dana & Jimmy

Disclosure: Comcast is the parent company of NBCUniversal, which owns CNBC. Versant would become the new parent company of CNBC upon Comcast’s planned spinoff of Versant.

WATCH: Google has a lot more leverage over Disney in their carriage fight: LightShed’s Rich Greenfield

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We’re looking to further trim this drug stock and exit this entertainment giant

Published

19 hours ago

November 14, 2025

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We're looking to further trim this drug stock and exit this entertainment giant

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JPMorgan Chase wins fight with fintech firms over fees to access customer data

Published

20 hours ago

November 14, 2025

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JPMorgan Chase wins fight with fintech firms over fees to access customer data

An exterior view of the new JPMorgan Chase global headquarters building at 270 Park Avenue on Nov. 13, 2025 in New York City.

Angela Weiss | AFP | Getty Images

JPMorgan Chase has secured deals ensuring it will get paid by the fintech firms responsible for nearly all the data requests made by third-party apps connected to customer bank accounts, CNBC has learned.

The bank has signed updated contracts with fintech middlemen that make up more than 95% of the data pulls on its systems, including Plaid, Yodlee, Morningstar and Akoya, according to JPMorgan spokesman Drew Pusateri.

“We’ve come to agreements that will make the open banking ecosystem safer and more sustainable and allow customers to continue reliably and securely accessing their favorite financial products,” Pusateri said in a statement. “The free market worked.”

The milestone is the latest twist in a long-running dispute between traditional banks and the fintech industry over access to customer accounts. For years, middlemen like Plaid paid nothing to tap bank systems when a customer wanted to use a fintech app like Robinhood to draw funds or check balances.

That dynamic appeared to be enshrined in law in late 2024 when the Biden-era Consumer Financial Protection Bureau finalized what is known as the “open-banking rule” requiring banks to share customer data with other financial firms at no cost.

But banks sued to prevent the CFPB rule from taking hold and seemed to gain the upper hand in May after the Trump administration asked a federal court to vacate the rule.

Soon after, JPMorgan — the largest U.S. bank by assets, deposits and branches — reportedly told the middlemen that it would start charging what amounts to hundreds of millions of dollars for access to its customer data.

In response, fintech, crypto and venture capital executives argued that the bank was engaging in “anti-competitive, rent-seeking behavior” that would hurt innovation and consumers’ ability to use popular apps.

After weeks of negotiations between JPMorgan and the middlemen, the bank agreed to lower pricing than it originally proposed, while the fintech middlemen won concessions regarding the servicing of data requests, according to people with knowledge of the talks.

Fintech firms preferred the certainty of locking in data-sharing rates because it is unclear whether the current CFPB, which is in the process of revising the open-banking rule, will favor banks or fintechs, according to a venture capital investor who asked for anonymity to discuss his portfolio companies.

The bank and the fintech firms declined to disclose details about their contracts, including how much the middlemen agreed to pay and how long the deals were in force.

Wider impact

The deals mark a shift in the power dynamic between banks, middlemen and the fintech apps that are increasingly threatening incumbents. More banks are likely to begin charging fintechs for access to their systems, according to industry observers.

“JPMorgan tends to be a trendsetter. They’re sort of the leader of the pack, so it’s fair to expect that the rest of the major banks will follow,” said Brian Shearer, director of competition and regulatory policy at the Vanderbilt Policy Accelerator.

Shearer, who worked at the CFPB under former director Rohit Chopra, said he was worried that the development would create a barrier of entry to nascent startups and ultimately result in higher costs for consumers.

Source: Robinhood

Proponents of the 2024 CFPB rule said it gave consumers control over their financial data and encouraged competition and innovation. Banks including JPMorgan said it exposed them to fraud and unfairly saddled them with the rising costs of maintaining systems increasingly tapped by the middlemen and their clients.

When Plaid’s deal with JPMorgan was announced in September, the companies issued a dual press release emphasizing the continuity it provided for customers.

But the industry group that Plaid is a part of has harshly criticized the development, signaling that while JPMorgan has won a decisive battle, the ongoing skirmish may yet play out in courts and in the public.

“Introducing prohibitive tolls is anti-competitive, anti-innovation, and flies in the face of the plain reading of the law,” said Penny Lee, CEO of the Financial Technology Association, told CNBC in response to the JPMorgan milestone.

“These agreements are not the free market at work, but rather big banks using their market position to capitalize on regulatory uncertainty,” Lee said. “We urge the Trump Administration to uphold the law by maintaining the existing prohibition on data access fees.”