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Avegant, a start-up in San Mateo, California, has built an LED light-engine that could enable device manufacturers to build small, stylish augmented-reality smart glasses.
Courtesy of Avegant

I recently tried a pair of prototype smart glasses from Avegant that gave me a glimpse of a future where we may be able to watch videos, get directions, see notifications and more, all through a pair of traditional-looking shades.

These sorts of glasses may be the next big thing as companies like Facebook, Snap, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple and others look beyond phones.

I’ve worn Google Glass, the Microsoft Hololens, Snap’s Spectacles and, most recently, Facebook’s Ray-Ban Stories glasses. But those all have shortcomings. They’re either too big and bulky to wear everywhere (Hololens), don’t yet display anything on the lenses (Facebook) or look silly (Spectacles, Hololens, Google Glass.)

Big Tech companies will need smart glasses to look normal if they’re to have any chance at success. So they’re desperately looking for a display component that is small and can be manufactured and shipped in the next year or two, Avegant CEO Edward Tang told CNBC. 

Avegant doesn’t make smart glasses, but it put together a prototype pair to demonstrate the capabilities of a new LED augmented-reality light engine that the company unveiled to the public this fall. And I was impressed.

Here’s what you need to know.

The problem with current ‘smart’ glasses

CNBC | Magdalena Petrova

A lot of companies are building smart glasses, but they’re all taking different approaches. It’s sort of a mess. Here’s a quick recap:

  • Microsoft’s $3,500 Hololens and the $2,295 Magic Leap 1 are the most advanced but they’re bulky and more akin to goggles.
  • Amazon offers the $249.99 Echo Frames, but they just let you talk to Alexa and you don’t see any augmented reality visuals through the lenses.
  • Facebook’s $299 Ray-Ban Stories glasses can be used to take photos and videos but little else. The latest version of Snap’s Spectacles offers some AR visuals, but it isn’t fashionable and is only available to social media creators.
  • Google repurposed its $999 Glass device for enterprise customers after it was dismissed by the public due to privacy concerns.
  • Apple is also reportedly working on its own glasses, but it’s still unclear when they’ll be unveiled let alone released to the public.

Avegant thinks it has a solution that might help companies build a product regular people will want to buy.

Its new light engine, which is thinner than a pencil and weighs as much as a large paper clip, fits within the hinge and temple of eyeglasses where it can show high-definition visuals to the wearer. The light engine could enable some companies that don’t have huge in-house hardware engineering teams to build glasses that are as stylish and small as a pair of Ray-Bans but offer the visual capabilities dreamed up in science fiction films like “Terminator.”

A glimpse at the future

I demoed the light engine in October when Tang handed me the prototype glasses his team built. They were thin and looked like any normal pair of glasses except that they were tethered to a smartphone by a cable. The prototype is intended to demonstrate just how small a hardware manufacturer can make a pair of glasses using Avegant’s light engine.

“We’re getting our stuff ready to have the smallest manufacturable display for these customers,” Tang said. 

I put the glasses on. A translucent blue square came on at the center of my field of view, showing a display that was overlaid on top of what I was seeing in real life. Then the demo started. 

The glasses began to cycle through different visuals. The small translucent screen showed me the weather, a stock chart and a text message conversation. I was looking in the direction of Tang and could see him, but the visuals also appeared on top of him in crystal clarity. It was true augmented reality. 

The highlight of the demo was when the glasses began to play a video. It was a snippet of a soccer match from this summer’s Euro 2020 tournament. I saw the green grass, the vast crowd and the players passing the ball to one another before the forward blasted a goal into the back of the net. The game looked as good and as big as it would if I was watching at home on my living room TV or sitting with friends at a sports bar.

The Avegant light engine offers a 30-degree field of view and appeared like a rectangle in the middle of my line of sight.

I handed the pair of glasses back to Tang, who put them on and began watching the demo. I could hardly tell he was watching anything, though I noticed a subtle hint of blue light on the lens. It appeared as if he was daydreaming.

But there are still drawbacks. Manufacturers who use the Avegant light engine will have to determine how much battery life they want their smart glasses to have. The more battery life, the bulkier the glasses will be. Likewise, a 30-degree field of view is on a par with the first Hololens, but it’s a smaller window than Microsoft’s Hololens 2.

The reality

Facebook’s Ray-Ban Stories glasses can take photos and videos through cameras at each corner of the device’s frames.
Courtesy of Ashley Bogdan

Components like Avegant’s may help some tech companies develop smart glasses people will want to wear. But it’s still early days and skeptics don’t think we’ll have normal-looking smart glasses anytime soon.

“The long-term vision here is to get rid of your phone in your hand, and you’ll wear your phone on your face,” Kevin Irwin, chief investment officer at Knollwood Investment, said. Irwin is an investor in Avegant. 

Avegant isn’t yet mass-producing its light engine. It envisions a business model in which it will sell the component to companies that can build it into their smart glasses.

Larger companies may not even need Avegan’ts technology, explained Karl Guttag, an expert on augmented reality display devices.

“Facebook and Apple are ground-up companies — they’ve got phenomenal, huge teams working on this stuff,” Guttag said. “They don’t need an Avegant, if you get my drift, whereas a Snap might because they’re not really in this. They’d be looking to get a component.”

Guttag also has his doubts about smart glasses replacing smartphones anytime in the near future, which would limit Avegant’s prospects. 

“The expectation that these things are going to be like Ray-Bans is off the chart far away,” Guttag said. “Now something like what Avegant’s engine does could get you something that is moderately stylish. It’s going to be a little bigger and bulkier but not all the way there.”

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Disney content to go dark on YouTubeTV after contract talks collapse

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October 31, 2025

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Disney content to go dark on YouTubeTV after contract talks collapse

Photo illustration of the YouTube TV logo displayed on a smartphone, with the YouTube logo in the background.

Nurphoto | Nurphoto | Getty Images

Content from The Walt Disney Company, including channels like ABC and ESPN, was removed from Google‘s YouTube TV on Thursday after the two companies failed to renew a streaming contract. 

“Despite our best efforts, we have not been able to reach a fair deal, and starting today, Disney programming will not be available on YouTube TV,” the platform said in a statement Thursday.

More than 20 channels, including ABC and ESPN, and Disney content recordings would be removed from YouTube TV, the company said.

The two sides had been engaged in negotiations but were unable to reach a new distribution agreement before their existing contract expired Oct. 30 at 11:59 p.m. Eastern time.

Disney did not immediately respond to a request for further comment. The mass media and entertainment conglomerate was the first to warn about the potential content removal last week.

In a Thursday statement on its official blog, YouTube argued Disney had “used the threat of a blackout on YouTube TV as a negotiating tactic to force deal terms that would raise prices on our customers,” and that Disney was now following through on that threat.

“We will not agree to terms that disadvantage our members while benefiting Disney’s own live TV products,” YouTube TV said in a post on its help center webpage. Disney’s live TV offerings include Hulu + Live TV and Fubo.

“We know how disruptive it is to lose channels you enjoy, and we’re committed to continuing to work with Disney to reach an agreement,” YouTube said in its statement, adding that if the content is unavailable for an extended period of time, the company will offer members a $20 credit. 

YouTube TV pays broadcasters to stream their channels and has been engaged in several tense negotiations over contract renewals in recent months.

Last month,  content was nearly removed from YouTube TV before the companies reached an agreement after a temporary extension, preventing shows like “Sunday Night Football” and “America’s Got Talent” from being pulled.

The recent clash between Disney and YouTube has an added twist, after YouTube hired former Disney distribution executive Justin Connolly earlier this year, prompting Disney to file a breach-of-contract lawsuit.

Connolly has recused himself from the discussions, CNBC previously reported, according to the people familiar with the process.

YouTube is the top U.S. media distributor by audience engagement, capturing over 13% of TV watch-time in July, according to Nielsen. It is also on track to be the biggest media company by revenue in 2025, beating Disney, analysts at MoffettNathanson told CNBC.

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.

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Apple silences its critics with strong iPhone demand and blowout services revenue

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6 hours ago

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October 31, 2025

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Apple silences its critics with strong iPhone demand and blowout services revenue

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SpaceX and Blue Origin both submitted plans to get astronauts back to the moon faster, NASA says

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6 hours ago

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October 31, 2025

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SpaceX and Blue Origin both submitted plans to get astronauts back to the moon faster, NASA says

SpaceX’s Starship rocket 38 launches during the 11th test flight on October 13, 2025 as seen from South Padre Island in Texas.

Gabriel V. Cardenas | Afp | Getty Images

SpaceX said it has pitched NASA a “simplified mission” to put astronauts back on the moon following criticisms over delays by Sean Duffy, the space agency’s acting administrator.

In a company blog post out Thursday, Elon Musk’s aerospace and defense contractor said: “We’ve shared and are formally assessing a simplified mission architecture and concept of operations that we believe will result in a faster return to the Moon while simultaneously improving crew safety.” 

Earlier this month, Duffy said in an interview on CNBC’s Squawk Box, that SpaceX was behind schedule on building its lunar landing system for NASA’s Artemis III mission and that the agency would reopen the landing contract for that mission to competitors such as Jeff Bezos‘ rocket maker Blue Origin.

A NASA spokesperson in an email to CNBC said that the agency “has received and is evaluating plans from both SpaceX and Blue Origin for acceleration of HLS production.”

“Following the shutdown, the agency will issue an RFI to the broader aerospace industry for their proposals,” the spokesperson said. “A committee of NASA subject matter experts is being assembled to evaluate each proposal and determine the best path forward to win the second space race given the urgency of adversarial threats to peace and transparency on the Moon.”

NASA had previously said that SpaceX and Blue Origin would have until Oct. 29th to propose new ways to speed up the project.

Musk initially responded to Duffy by posting to his social network X, “Sean Dummy is trying to kill NASA!” In another post, Musk wrote: “The person responsible for America’s space program can’t have a 2 digit IQ.”

SpaceX’s massive Starship has flown 11 test flights so far, uncrewed. The last two flights were deemed successful, but the company has not yet shown all the in-orbit refueling capabilities it requires before embarking on the Artemis III, manned lunar mission.

Blue Origin has been developing a lunar lander for NASA and has received about $835 million from the space agency since their contract began in 2023. The company plans to launch a smaller scale version of their lander, known as Blue Moon Mark 1.

Meanwhile, China is aiming to land its astronauts on the moon by the end of the decade.

In September, in an all-hands meetings with NASA employees, Duffy told his staff that he was irked by “shade thrown” on the space agency at a Senate hearing in which some attendees doubted that the U.S. could put astronauts back on the Moon before China could land its astronauts there.

Besides its lunar mission, China also announced it is sending a new crew to its orbiting lab, the Tiangong space station, this week. China built this space station after it was excluded from access to the International Space Station due to U.S. national security concerns.

SpaceX is paid when it achieves different milestones under its NASA contract for the HLS (human landing system integrated lander).

According to USA Spending, which tracks federal contracts, NASA has already paid approximately $2.7 billion to SpaceX for the “design, development, manufacture, test, launch, demonstration and engineering support” of the HLS. The agency is obligated to pay around another $300 million for milestones SpaceX achieved, and Musk’s company stands to earn a total of $4.5 billion (or another $1.5 billion) from the HLS contract if they achieve all milestones.

SpaceX today said, in their company blog post, that they “self-funded” 90% or more of the program, which would imply they have spent over $30 billion already.

As CNBC previously reported, some NASA employees have been required to work without pay for the space agency during the federal government shutdown if their jobs support Artemis missions.

SpaceX and Blue Origin did not immediately respond to CNBC’s requests for comment.

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