Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) smartglasses are breaking into the global mainstream, reshaping how consumers interact with AI in daily life and signaling the country's growing edge in wearable AI hardware.

China shipped 2.46 million smart glasses in 2025, up 87.1 percent year on year. Chinese brands accounted for 23 percent of global shipments, according to International Data Corporation (IDC).
Industry leaders see the surge as more than numbers, with Rokid's founder predicting smart glasses will become the defining AI device for everyday users.
"Smart glasses or AI glasses will be the most popular AI terminal devices to the end user in the AI era. So, I think it's going to get more popular, so maybe in the coming three to five years everybody will put AI glasses on," said Zhu Mingming, founder and CEO of Rokid, a Hangzhou-based technology company specializing in Augmented Reality（AR）and AI hardware.
The rise of multimodal AI is giving smart glasses new momentum. They have become tools for translation, navigation, note-taking, photography, entertainment, and even real-time assistance.
And in scenarios that demand richer visual experiences, AR glasses or AI-powered AR glasses are becoming portals for work, entertainment, communication, and spatial computing.
"This product is our current high-end Xreal One Pro series, and below it there is the Xreal One S. Both products are based on our self-developed optical engine technology and also incorporate the spatial computing chip we just mentioned," said Yang Shiqi, marketing director of Xreal.
China's smart-glasses industry has built a strong hardware foundation, with lighter designs and AI now standard. The diversity of smart glasses is shaping the future of the industry, according to a tech influencer.
"There are like XR glasses, AR glasses, AI glasses, MR (Mixed Reality) glasses. So these are completely different types of glasses and I will use them in different scenarios. I think AI definitely pushed a lot of buttons for a lot of brands, that's the future," said Wang Hongcheng, a tech influencer.