In a world of Meta-Raybans and Vision Pros, Snapchat makers are now planning to go big. Snap Inc, the parent company of Snapchat, announced that it carved out a new wholly owned subsidiary called Specs Inc as it prepares a serious push into smartglasses and everyday augmented reality computing.
Snap said that Specs Inc will exist as a distinct subsidiary within the group, fully owned by Snap but with its own operational structure. For this, Specs has also started hiring for nearly 100 open roles globally.
The company said that this move will give the smartglasses business a sharper focus, make it easier to bring in strategic partners or future minority investors, build a standalone brand, and make the unit’s value clearer to markets as it moves towards a public launch of Specs later this year.
This also meant that Snap no longer sees smartglasses as an experimental side project. They are betting big on hardware (and privacy).
Specs is said to be a “new type of eyewear” that merges digital information with the physical world through see‑through lenses.
Instead of pulling users into a screen like a phone or VR headset, the smartglasses place three‑dimensional digital objects in the real world and can be controlled using hand gestures and voice commands.
Developers are already working with Specs, building early applications ranging from backyard games like capture‑the‑flag, to interactive chemistry lessons that simulate reactions, to tools for teams to look at virtual product designs together while still seeing each other and their surroundings.
Snap has positioned this as a more “human” style of computing that keeps people present with friends, family and colleagues rather than isolating them behind devices.
AI ‘Intelligence System’ at the core
Specs is expected to ship with what Snap calls a first‑of‑its‑kind “Intelligence System”, an artificial intelligence layer that uses its understanding of the wearer and their environment to help get tasks done proactively.
The company said that this system is designed to respect privacy, and pitches Specs as a computer you “use less because it does more for you”, challenging the attention‑grabbing design of today’s phones and apps.
Over the long term, Snap also argued that Specs could help reduce waste by replacing some physical products—such as whiteboards, manuals, televisions and toys—with shared digital versions, cutting the need to manufacture and ship those items.
The Snapchat parent has even claimed that Specs would be the start of a new people‑first computing era, around 50 years after the personal computer boom. All of this would now hinge on how the reveal of the next generation of Specs would go later this year.
