What comes after smartphones, with Snap CEO Evan Spiegel

**Evan Spiegel** (0:02)
This is pretty fun, playing chess in the pub.
Cheers. Cheers. Good to see you. Good to see you.

**John** (0:09)
So, give me the Snap 2026 update, product business. Just what do you spend your days thinking about?

**Evan Spiegel** (0:15)
Well, we've described it as the crucible moment. Actually, we described it as that towards the end of 2025, and it is just proving to be true in a major way for a couple of reasons. One, we're about to reach a billion monthly active users, which is a big deal for us. We're really excited about the progress in the core Snapchat business. We're also on the verge of net income profitability, which is really exciting for us, especially as we invest really meaningfully in hardware and our specs, glasses effort, and that maybe brings me to the last point, which is that specs are coming to consumers for the first time later this year. So after 12 years of investment in glasses and the next generation of computing and trying to make computing more human, it's actually coming. So it's a pretty extreme time at Snap, and we're doing all of that while transforming the business with AI. So it's a pretty full on moment.

**John** (1:04)
Why have specs been hard to get right? Like the vision you guys have had for a while, I think has generally existed for a while. There were precursors like Google Glass, and actually was it a precursor, or did you guys have specs before that?

**Evan Spiegel** (1:18)
We've been working on specs probably since 2014 I think Glass came out in 2013, I want to say.

**John** (1:24)
Anyway, similar times you guys have been working on specs since very early on. Describe some of the technical challenges, because it seems technically challenging with a lot of miniaturization challenges, but maybe give us an overview of why specs are hard to make work.

**Evan Spiegel** (1:37)
Yeah, the technical challenges are extraordinary. I mean, I think the promise of specs is that you take the capability that people have experienced and sort of pass through VR, but put it into a see-through glasses form factor, and that's the space that's unoccupied today. You basically have very low capability, smart glasses or AI glasses, or kind of like AirPods with a camera sort of thing. And then you have very high capability virtual reality devices like the Vision Pro. And I think the sweet spot for specs coming later this year is the wearability of normal glasses, but the capability of true spatial computer, like something like a Vision Pro. So the idea and I think the promise of glasses, or at least what I love about glasses, that it actually brings computing into the world. I mean, I think this is something that computing has suffered for a very, very long time, is that it just by its nature has been isolating. When I was growing up, I loved computers. I built my own computer, but to use a computer, you had to be in the computer lab at lunch when all your friends were on the schoolyard. And I think phones have continued that trend of pulling people into the screen, rather than bringing people into the world, helping people share experiences together with their friends. And so the promise of see-through glasses is like, you and I can sit across from each other, play a game of chess, design something, build something, watch something together. That's totally unlike any computing experience that exists today.

**John** (2:55)
What do you think in, say, 10 or 15 years time that computing mix looks like? This is going to be some amount of glasses, like, well, smartwatches still in place, or will the glasses do that? I mean, maybe it's useful for the wrist measurements. Do you also have like a Amazon Alexa style AI speaker and how many with you? If so, I'm just curious, as you think about moving, you're describing moving beyond the smartphone.
What do you think that new equilibrium looks like?

**Evan Spiegel** (3:22)
I don't necessarily think we're going to move beyond the smartphone. I think the smartphone is actually going to play maybe the most important role of legacy technology.

**John** (3:29)
Sure, move beyond solely a smartphone.

**Evan Spiegel** (3:32)
Yeah. So, I mean, I think if you look at the capability of glasses, at least when it comes to specs, right? What I actually would estimate is that a lot of the large screen use cases are the first to move, right? So, if you think about what's so interesting about specs, you can have a huge TV with you almost anywhere, a giant screen with you almost anywhere. Why would you pay thousands of dollars to put two or three TVs in your home when you can have any size screen through lightweight glasses? I think the same goes for a desktop display or a laptop. And I think that's really valuable when you're traveling, of course. I mean, I don't know, it's super frustrating for me to work on a tiny laptop.