ALIBABA will announce its first AI Glasses this week: There's a version with display, and a version without

Alibaba is about to drop its first in-house AI glasses, diving headfirst into the “Battle of a Hundred Glasses.” Expect the usual lineup of voice assistant, music, calls, real-time translation and meeting minutes, plus deep hooks into Amap, Alipay and Taobao. Under the hood you’ve got a dual-chip Snapdragon AR1 + BES2800 design, two flavors (AI only or AI+AR with a display) and core smarts powered by Tongyi Qianwen alongside Quark’s vertical models for learning and health.

This launch caps Alibaba’s big AI-to-C shuffle—merging Tmall Genie hardware with the Quark AI team under VP Wu Jia and led by veteran Song Gang—and stakes its claim in a crowded, early-stage AR/AI glasses market. With belt-and-braces integration across navigation, payments, shopping and travel reminders, Alibaba hopes to break past the current battery, comfort and app-island bottlenecks and finally bring smart specs to the masses alongside rivals like Xiaomi, Meta, Baidu and ByteDance.