In February, ByteDance internally halted the Douyin AI Smart Glasses project, with R&D investment exceeding 50 million RMB, after previously denying shipment rumors

According to 1M AI News, ByteDance has internally confirmed the suspension of the Douyin AI Glasses project in February, and this product line will no longer be pursued as a definitive direction in the foreseeable future.

This project was previously jointly developed by ByteDance and the OEM factory Longqi Technology. The product weighs less than 50 grams, is equipped with a self-developed spatial algorithm chip, and is priced at less than 2000 yuan. The original plan was to launch the screenless version in the first quarter of 2026, followed by the display version in the fourth quarter. Longqi's minimum order requirement was set at 1 million units, and ByteDance's R&D investment in this project has exceeded 50 million yuan. In January of this year, Blue Whale News reported that the product was "about to ship," but on the same day, the person in charge of Douyin denied to Yicai that "the rumor is not true, and there is currently no clear sales plan."

The core reason for the suspension is ByteDance's internal assessment that it is currently difficult to make a true differentiation with the AI Glasses. These glasses adopt a screenless approach, with the main interaction method being voice, which highly overlaps with the functionality of ByteDance's Ola Friend AI Earphones (priced at 1199 yuan) launched in 2024. At an industry level, Meta's smart glasses had a global sales volume of over 7 million pairs in 2025, commanding a 73% market share, making it challenging for latecomers to establish fundamental hardware differentiation. Previously, vivo had also halted its own AI Glasses project for the same reason of "difficulty in differentiation."