Alibaba Enters AI Wearables with Quark AI Glasses
Alibaba has officially entered the AI wearables market with the unveiling of its Quark AI Glasses, set to launch in China by the end of 2025. This strategic move positions the e-commerce giant to compete with established players like Meta and Xiaomi in the rapidly expanding smart eyewear sector.
The Quark AI Glasses are powered by Alibaba’s proprietary Qwen large language model and its upgraded Quark AI assistant. The Qwen series of models, developed by Alibaba Cloud, are known for their strong performance in both Chinese and English language tasks, multimodal understanding, and advanced reasoning capabilities. The Quark AI assistant, which previously launched as a standalone mobile app, is designed to handle various tasks including academic research, document preparation, image generation, presentations, medical diagnostics, travel planning, and problem-solving. It excels at providing real-time, precise, and comprehensive information from multiple online sources.
The Quark AI Glasses are designed to be multifunctional wearable devices, deeply integrated with the broader Alibaba ecosystem. Key features include real-time language translation, hands-free calling, music playback, and meeting transcription. Users will also be able to access navigation via Alibaba’s Amap, make payments through Alipay, and compare product prices on Taobao using voice commands. The hardware specifications include a dual-chip architecture utilizing Qualcomm’s AR1 chip and Bestechnic’s BES2800, aiming for balanced performance and battery efficiency. The glasses feature a 12MP Sony camera sensor and emphasize a lightweight, ergonomic design for comfortable daily wear. Alibaba plans to release two versions: a standard AI smart glasses model without a display and an AI+AR model with an augmented reality display.
Alibaba’s entry into this market comes amidst significant growth in the AI glasses sector. The global smart glasses market is projected to expand from $1.93 billion in 2024 to $8.26 billion by 2030, with a compound annual growth rate of 27.3%. Global smart glasses shipments surged 210% year-over-year in 2024, largely driven by the success of Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses. Analysts anticipate over 25 million AR glasses shipments by 2030. This competitive landscape includes major players like Meta, which currently holds over 60% market share, and Xiaomi, which also introduced its AI eyewear this year. Alibaba views the Quark AI Glasses as the next evolution of personal computing, aiming to address common pain points in existing AI wearables such as user experience, battery life, and AI interaction. The company has committed to an aggressive investment strategy in AI, including a $53 billion investment into AI infrastructure over the next three years.