Meta Plans AI Pendant and 'Wearables for Work' Hardware Push

Meta is building an AI-powered pendant and a new enterprise wearables line, according to an internal memo from its wearables division reported today by The Information. The push extends Meta's hardware bet well beyond smart glasses and signals that CEO Mark Zuckerberg sees ambient, always-on AI devices as the next personal computing platform.

Why this matters

Meta has spent years and tens of billions of dollars searching for hardware that escapes its dependence on Apple and Google's mobile operating systems. The pendant project is the clearest sign yet that the company believes the post-phone interface will be a small, always-listening AI device — not a headset.

What's being built

The new pendant builds directly on Meta's late-2025 acquisition of Limitless, the startup behind a clip-on Bluetooth microphone literally called "Pendant." Limitless's device listens and records everything a user says or hears throughout the day, then provides searchable transcripts, summaries, and a personal memory database.

Meta plans to start testing its own pendant within the next year, per the memo viewed by The Information. The device would presumably plug into Meta AI for retrieval, summarization, and proactive suggestions — using the company's Llama and Muse Spark models to turn raw audio into useful recall.

The memo also describes a new enterprise service called "Wearables for Work," aimed at deploying smart glasses and other devices into business settings. That's a meaningful expansion: until now, Meta's wearables strategy has been almost entirely consumer-focused, built around its Ray-Ban and Oakley partnerships with EssilorLuxottica.

A 10 million unit goal

Meta is targeting 10 million wearable device sales in the second half of 2026, the memo reportedly states. To hit that, the company plans to launch new AI glasses products and expand sales into additional countries.

That target would represent a step-change in scale for Meta's hardware business. Ray-Ban Meta glasses have been the company's first real consumer hit since the original Quest headset, but unit volumes have been modest. Doubling or tripling that volume in a single half-year requires either a breakout new SKU or much broader retail distribution — likely both.

Why the pendant, why now

The pendant category is suddenly crowded. Humane's AI Pin was an early flop, but Limitless built a quieter, more focused audio-only product that found a niche among knowledge workers and people with auditory memory issues. Friend launched a similar always-on companion device. OpenAI and former Apple designer Jony Ive are working on an unannounced AI hardware product widely rumored to be in this category.

For Meta, the case is strategic as much as commercial. A pendant captures rich first-person audio context that no phone or laptop sees — meetings, hallway conversations, half-remembered ideas. Whoever owns that data layer owns the most personal AI assistant.

What industry watchers are saying

Hardware analysts have been skeptical of the AI wearables category overall, citing privacy concerns, short battery life, and the awkwardness of explaining to a colleague that they're being recorded. But Meta has structural advantages competitors lack: a billion-plus user social graph, a working AI assistant deployed across Instagram and WhatsApp, and an in-house silicon team (MTIA) that can drive cost down at volume.

Engadget noted that the company is also working on additional AI glasses models beyond the current Ray-Ban and Oakley lineups, suggesting Meta intends to fragment the wearables market the way Apple fragmented the smartwatch — different form factors for different jobs.

What's next

Testing on the pendant is set to begin within the next year, which would put a public preview sometime in 2027. The "Wearables for Work" enterprise program may launch sooner, given that smart glasses hardware already ships in volume.

For developers, the bigger question is whether Meta opens an SDK for third-party agents to run on its wearable devices. The Limitless app already has integrations; if Meta extends that to Llama-powered custom agents, it would mirror the strategy Google and Microsoft are pursuing with their own agent platforms.

Bottom line

Meta is no longer treating AI wearables as a side bet. The pendant project, the enterprise wearables push, and the 10-million-unit sales target collectively reframe Meta as a hardware company chasing the post-phone interface — with always-on ambient AI as the operating layer. Whether consumers and workers are ready to wear an always-listening microphone is the question Meta will spend the next 18 months trying to answer.