September 2026: Inside the Build of Meta VR Glasses, Muse, and Ray-Ban Meta Audio

This is a special edition of Behind the Build, recapping some of the engineering and product breakthroughs from Meta Connect 2026. VR Glasses that took relentless iteration, delivered in a breakthrough form factor. A personal AI agent that you can take everywhere you go to get more done. And Ray-Ban Meta Audio, our first audio glasses, built around our most-used feature. 

Three very different engineering problems. One common thread: the hard part was never the demo.

Let’s dive in!

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Read time: 5 – 7 minutes

In this edition

• From Sketch to Scale: How Our Team Built Meta VR Glasses — Alfred Jones and his team on turning a proven prototype into a mass-manufactured spatial computing device.
• Muse Updates: Take It Everywhere You Go — A personal AI agent you can talk to in real time and reach in more places throughout your day.
• Ray-Ban Meta Audio: Our First Audio Glasses — The lightest frames and longest battery life yet.
• Bonus: Connect Through an Employee’s Eyes — From London to Meta HQ, a Meta employee’s first-hand Connect experience and more exclusive behind the scenes stories.

From Sketch to Scale: How the Team Built Meta VR Glasses

“Anybody can make a prototype. The hard thing is how do you go from sketch to scale?” — Alfred Jones, VP of VR and AI Devices Hardware        

That question is the whole story of Meta VR Glasses. The experience was proven. Making them real, repeatable, and magical — at manufacturing scale, against a high quality bar — was the actual engineering problem.

What we revealed: a private cinema, an immersive front-row seat, a multi-monitor workstation, and a game console, all in a breakthrough spatial computing device with a glasses-like form factor. No straps, no heavy hardware on your face. Navigation by eyes, hands, or voice. A 5K Infinite Display built on micro-OLED panels at roughly 100 grams.

Every one of those numbers is a constraint fight. Micro-OLED panel yield, thermal budget inside a temple arm, eye-tracking latency low enough that your gaze feels like a cursor instead of a lag. Research and prototyping are the fun part; turning that into something manufacturable takes a team willing to solve the same problem over and over until one answer holds. Or as Alfred Jones puts it: “our team iterates like hell.”

Learn more about Meta VR Glasses: a new era for virtual reality in a pair of glasses.

Muse: Take It Everywhere You Go

We introduced Muse just a few weeks ago, and the response has been incredible. At Connect we showed what's next: a Muse you can talk to in real time and reach in more places throughout your day.

Mark Zuckerberg showed how Muse keeps getting better with new features, connectors, and a state-of-the-art model that brings your Muse to life.

• Muse on AI glasses: You’ll soon be able to say your agent’s name, and Muse can act on what you’re looking at, so you won’t have to describe what’s in front of you. Ask about a product on a shelf, a flier on a wall, or a long list of school supplies, and Muse can take action.
• Voice mode: Talking to an agent as capable as Muse is different from voice chat with an assistant. You can have a long, in-depth conversation, and Muse gets work done in the background while you’re still talking.
• More connectors for Muse: Connectors are a big reason Muse can do so much for people. We launched with dozens of partners along with access to the entire Shopify catalogue. To make Muse an even better shopper, we’re adding Walmart, Best Buy, American Eagle Outfitters, DICK’S Sporting Goods, Fanatics, Gap, Michael Kors, Sephora, Ulta, and Wayfair, plus Shop Pay and PayPal for payments. Expedia is coming soon to help you plan travel, and when you’re stocking the kitchen, Instacart is there. For getting work done, there’s Notion, Granola, GitHub, and Box. And this is just the start, with more partners on the way.
• Muse gets its own email address: Muse will have its own email address that it can use to get things done, or even just as another way for you to communicate with it.

Read the full article and learn more about how we designed and built safety into Muse.

Ray-Ban Meta Audio: Our First Audio Glasses

Ray-Ban Meta Audio are our first-ever audio glasses offering our slimmest frames and longest battery life yet, in new iconic styles including Clubmaster and Burbank. Open-ear speakers built into the arms so you can listen to music, take a call, or talk to Meta AI without blocking out the conversation or the street around you. Tune in without tuning out.

From an engineering perspective, removing a component is never just removal. Losing the camera changes the thermal profile, the weight distribution across the frame, the power budget, and the interaction model — an audio pair of glasses has to answer “what am I looking at?” differently than a pair that can see. Designing a genuinely slimmer frame around that new set of tradeoffs, while extending battery life rather than trading it away, is the build story worth telling here. 

Read more about Ray-Ban Meta Audio and our biggest expansion of AI glasses. 

Bonus: Meta Connect Through an Employee’s Eyes

Michael, a Partner Manager on Scaled Partnerships based in London and co-lead of Black@ Meta Resource Group and Black in Tech UK, attended his first Connect after nearly six years at Meta — and filmed the whole thing. His recap runs from packing up in London to walking past the Menlo Park sign and seeing the Connect builds in person for the first time. Or as Michael says, 

"The people. The tech. The possibilities."        

Even More Bonus Stories

• Get a deeper look at all the keynote announcements from Meta Connect 2026 
• Go behind-the-scenes at the Connect experience from build to launch in 60-secs
• Hear from Matt Jacobson, Creative VP, AI Wearables, on the Meta Lab experience

Hear From Our Execs

"Designing the next generation of computing is as much about fit, feel, and personal expression as it is about capability." — Joshua To , VP of Product Design at Meta (AR, AI & Wearables)

"Congratulations Mark, Alexandr Wang, Nat Friedman and the entire Meta team for an incredible Meta Connect 2026! #Muse #MetaGlasses" — Dina Powell McCormick , President and Vice Chair at Meta

This was one of the most exciting Connects yet! As Mark put it, the highest purpose of superintelligence is creation and invention, not automation. We're optimists at Meta because we believe in people. — Benjamin Joe, Vice President, Asia Pacific, Meta

Don’t Forget to Subscribe

That’s a wrap! We’ll see you in the next one. Until then, keep building and experimenting.

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