Better Than Meta? Alibaba Releases Its Own Connected Glasses

Better than Meta? Alibaba releases its own connected glasses

Last updated: 2025/11/01 at 9:10 AM

News Room Published 1 November 2025

Alibaba no longer only sells fridges and sneakers. The Chinese group is now attacking its customers’ faces with its first connected glasses, the Quark AI Glasses. Presented last summer, they are now available for pre-order on Tmall at a Price of 4,699 yuan (around €600), with the first deliveries scheduled for December.

Glasses that do (almost) everything

Beneath their appearance of classic glasses, these Quark AI hide a real artificial intelligence powerhouse. Powered by the in-house Qwen language model (more than 400 million downloads, all the same), they know how to answer questions, translate in real time, transcribe meetings or even broadcast music.

Everything, of course, is connected to the Alibaba “universe”: navigation via Amap, payments with Alipay, price comparisons on Taobao, travel reservations on Fliggy… Enough to transform a simple walk into a real virtual assistance session, but limited to China all the same. Alongside the launch, Alibaba deployed a new tool in its Quark application: the Quark AI Chat assistant. This digital companion combines search and conversation in a single interface. You can talk to him, show him a photo, ask him to write a text or even solve a problem using an image.

Thanks to this system, the company promises an “ambient” experience as it says, where the AI adapts to what the user does. Glasses will soon know what you need before you even ask (or almost). Above all, Alibaba wants to push its artificial intelligence everywhere in daily life. The Quark AI Glasses are therefore not just a gadget: they also represent the group’s strategy to bring AI out of the screen and slip it into the objects we wear every day.

With this launch, Alibaba joins the small club of giants who are betting big on smart glasses. The market looks promising: according to the Markets and Markets firm, it could grow by 30% per year by 2030. But competition is tough. Meta has taken the lead with its connected Ray-Bans, whose sales have tripled this year. The social media giant unveiled new models at its Meta Connect conference, including the Meta Ray-Ban Display and Oakley Vanguard.

The question that arises is whether Alibaba will be able to appeal beyond China. The Quark AI Glasses have in-depth integration with the in-house ecosystem which does not really exist outside the country.