Even Realities CEO Will Wang has launched a scathing attack on Meta and Google, accusing them of equipping smart glasses with cameras not to enhance user experience but to harvest personal data for training Artificial Intelligence models. In an exclusive interview, Wang explained that his company deliberately omits cameras from its devices, focusing instead on a text-based heads-up display that guarantees privacy, lightness and extended battery life.
The tech giants' strategy exposed by Will Wang
According to Wang, companies like Meta and Google let their long-term ambitions spoil current products. "Including a camera because you believe visual data will be crucial for AI in the future means sacrificing present usability," he stated. The result is heavy, power-hungry devices designed for data gathering rather than comfortable wear. Even Realities, by contrast, focuses on a product that works today without selling future dreams. This approach stands in stark contrast to the data-collection model criticized in recent articles about Claude Cowork sandbox escape.
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Even Realities G1 and G2: the radical camera-free choice
Since the first G1 model, Even Realities has excluded any camera or speaker. Its glasses offer an ambient display that shows notifications, navigation and live conversation summaries in real time, without intruding on others' privacy. "We don't thrive on selling data; we thrive on making good products," Wang emphasized. This choice also avoids regulatory pitfalls, as rules for using visual data via smart glasses have not been established. A stance opposite to Meta's, which with Ray-Bans exposed 500,000 sessions to security risks as reported in the Google Gemini 4 development context.
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Engineering team grows from 20 to 400 for G3
Despite being a startup, Even Realities has strengthened its position thanks to a recent funding round that valued the company at $1 billion. The engineering team has grown from 20-30 people for G1 to 300-400 for the upcoming G3 model. "The big players are already buying our products to analyze our roadmap," Wang revealed. This expansion will allow Even Realities to compete directly with industry giants, similar to how Nvidia and Microsoft launched the Open Secure AI Alliance.
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The smart glasses war: two philosophies clash
On one side, Meta and Google want to turn your face into a sensor array for their AI algorithms; on the other, Even Realities offers a clean, privacy-respecting HUD that looks like ordinary glasses. For Wang, the winner of the smart glasses revolution will not be the company that records the most video of your daily life, but the one that lets you look the world in the eye without a camera watching back. This philosophy is gaining traction among industry observers, as discussed on Wikipedia.
