The smart glasses industry has long been a tortured dream of Silicon Valley.
Five days. That’s all that’s left to lock in one of the smartest advantages you can give yourself as a founder, investor, or operator right now.
Early Bird savings for TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 end May 29 at 11:59 p.m. PT. Register now to save up to $410 before prices increase and secure your spot at the center of the startup ecosystem.
Winning as a startup isn’t just about pitching
Advancing from idea to IPO takes time and how you spend that time can make the difference in whether you stall or scale. Many think it’s the pitch that slows things down. But in reality, it’s access.
Fundraising is a long game of chasing proximity. Cold outreach. Missed intros. Weeks waiting for replies that never come. You spend as much time trying to get in front of the right investors as you do refining your story. Without access, capital is moving. Deals are getting done. Just not with you.
When Disrupt comes to Moscone West in San Francisco, October 13–15, 2026, access isn’t accidental because it’s built into the experience. Those who attend can access:
Startup Battlefield 200: Pitch in front of top-tier VCs and compete for a $100,000 equity-free prize.
Deal Flow Café: A dedicated space for real investor-founder conversations.
Curated matchmaking: Targeted 1:1 and small-group meetings with aligned investors.
Expo Hall proximity: Turn cold outreach into live demos and real conversations.
You shift from chasing attention to securing influence
Your Disrupt ticket gives you access to candid, tactical, and unfiltered insights from active founders, top-tier investors, and operators scaling real companies like:
Nina Achadjian, Partner, Index Ventures
Puneet Agarwal, Partner, True Ventures
Karl Alomar, Managing Partner, M13
Rajeev Dham, Partner, Sapphire Ventures
Aklil Ibssa, Corporate Development, Coinbase
Mo Jomaa, Partner, CapitalG
Grant Lee, CEO & Co-founder, Gamma
Dean Leitersdorf, CEO & Co-founder, Decart
Lindsey Mignano, Founder & Attorney, Mignano Law Group
Josh Reeves, CEO & Co-founder, Gusto
Shailendra Singh, Managing Director, Peak XV
Lotti Siniscalco, Partner, Emergence Capital
Arsalan Tavakoli-Shiraji, Co-founder & CEO, Databricks
Michel Tricot, CEO & Co-founder, Airbyte
Rob Toews, Partner, Radical Ventures
Image Credits:Kimberly White / Getty Images
Explore the sessions these tech leaders will lead on the agenda page.
And register before May 29 at 11:59 p.m. PT to save up to $410 and show up with more opportunities to connect, fundraise, and scale.
This is where fundraising cycles compress
When Disrupt hits San Francisco, more than 10,000 founders, investors, and operators, along with 300+ startups, will gather with one goal: advance deals.
That changes the pace of doing business immediately. Instead of months of back-and-forth, conversations start — and move faster. You’re engaging across:
Industry stages and keynotes
Roundtables and breakouts
Speaker Q&A sessions
Curated 1:1 and small group networking
Investor-founder networking sessions
StrictlyVC sessions and investor receptions
You’re not burning through resources trying to get into a meeting — you’re already in one. Disrupt is a premier global startup event where the ecosystem converges to move ideas, deals, and companies forward.
And when you register before May 29, you can save up to $410 before rates increase. Secure your pass before this limited-time pricing ends.
From inbox to in-person: proximity changes everything
At Disrupt, you’re face-to-face with investors who can ask questions on the spot, understand how you think beyond your deck, and evaluate your vision directly. You can read signals immediately to determine what resonates, what doesn’t, and where to adjust.
That kind of feedback loop compresses timelines. What normally takes weeks begins to take shape in a single day — especially as you move between sessions, meetings, and conversations across the venue.
80+ Side Events across the Bay Area for networking, workshops, and soci
The smart glasses industry has long been a tortured dream of Silicon Valley. The premise is appealing enough: What if, to enjoy the benefits of mobile computing, people didn’t have to stare at their phones all day long and could, instead, simply wear a lightweight computing device on their face? Science fiction fans (a demographic that is strong in the tech industry) can see this vision perfectly.
However, the industry has — for much of the last decade — resembled a financial black hole into which gargantuan investments have been sunk and from which little to no profit has ever emerged.
“Everybody’s losing money,” said Chi Xu, the founder and CEO of the smart glasses company Xreal, which is a longtime partner of Google. I met Xu at Google’s I/O conference in Mountain View last week, where he was promoting Xreal’s Project Aura. That’s its latest effort to create a set of functional XR glasses that people actually want to use.
“That’s because it’s very hard, what we’re doing,” he said.
For much of the industry’s existence, the problems of smart glasses have seemed somewhat obvious: bulky, uncomfortable, and socially awkward form factor, paired with negligibly beneficial software. Now, however, industry insiders — including Xu — feel like their business has turned a corner and may be reaching an inflection point.
That supposed inflection point has something to do with Meta, whose 2023 partnership with Ray-Ban launched one of the first lines of models that has actually managed to sell a lot of units. (It’s worth noting, however, that the division responsible for the glasses, Reality Labs, still operates at a massive loss.)
Now, as form factors shrink and software improves, Xu feels that Xreal can finally become a leader in the space. “You need all the key pieces ready — you need the hardware ready, the operating system needs to be ready, and then you need a great user interface,” Xu said.
Xreal’s newest model Aura is wired smart glasses that have OLED displays embedded within them, meaning that you can watch high-resolution videos within the frames themselves. Somewhat awkwardly, Aura comes tethered to a “puck” — essentially a phone-shaped mini-computer that powers the experience behind the glasses. When using it, you can ostensibly just slip it into your pocket.
But in exchange for the awkwardness of the puck, the user gets a wider variety of fun experiences with the glasses, including an immersive Google Maps app, VR YouTube videos, and a “painting app” that lets you — via the powers of hand tracking — create holographic imagery that only you can see. There are also reportedly games, playable (again) via hand tracking, and basic web surfing functionality.
“Whether you are following a floating recipe while cooking, setting up a private workspace at a coffee shop or on a flight, or watching a movie on a virtual big screen at home, the experience is seamless,” the company promises.
Xu also says that he imagines the device being used not just by the casual consumer but by professionals as well. “It’s not just about watching the NBA game in a hologram type of format, you could also go to a coffee shop and do some work,” he said.
Currently, the glasses are only available for developers, but the plan is for them to launch commercially later this year. Xreal is also working on an IPO that is expected to take place before 2026 is over, although Xu declined to say much about it.
In the meantime, the company is working on that whole turning-a-profit thing. Xu notes that his company has been raising its gross margin while lowering its costs for marketing and sales. “Next year is the year when we could actually break even,” he says. When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.
Lucas is a senior writer at TechCrunch, where he covers artificial intelligence, consumer tech, and startups. He previously covered AI and cybersecurity at Gizmodo.
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