Meta is reviving its smartwatch four years after quitting — here’s what’s changed

Meta Platforms is preparing to launch its first smartwatch later this year, reviving a hardware project it abandoned four years ago as the company bets that artificial intelligence can breathe new life into the crowded wearables market.

The device, known internally as Malibu 2, will feature health-tracking capabilities and a built-in Meta AI assistant, according to two people familiar with the matter. Meta declined to comment on the plans.

The move marks a significant reversal for the $1.4tn social media group, which shelved an earlier smartwatch effort in 2022 as part of sweeping cost cuts across its Reality Labs hardware division. That first attempt had been ambitious to the point of hubris—plans at one stage called for versions equipped with three cameras—before the project was quietly wound down alongside broader retrenchment across the unit.

The timing of the revival is not accidental. Meta’s Ray-Ban AI smartglasses, developed in partnership with EssilorLuxottica, have become a rare commercial success story in consumer hardware, with shipments climbing to nearly 6mn units in 2025. The glasses have demonstrated that consumers are willing to wear AI on their bodies — provided the form factor is familiar enough. A smartwatch, the most established wearable category, represents a lower-risk extension of that theory.

The Malibu 2 is expected to arrive just ahead of an updated pair of Ray-Ban Display glasses, positioning the two devices as complementary rather than competing products. Meta has been reassessing the sequencing of its hardware releases amid internal concern that launching too many devices in quick succession risks confusing consumers and cannibalising attention. Phoenix, its mixed-reality glasses project, has been pushed back to 2027, according to people briefed on the decision.

The company has approximately four augmented and mixed-reality glasses in various stages of development. Streamlining that pipeline while bringing a more accessible device to market first reflects a growing pragmatism inside Mark Zuckerberg‘s hardware operation — one shaped partly by the $16bn Reality Labs lost in 2024 alone, and more than $50bn since 2020.

The competitive pressure to move is acute. Apple, which has spent a decade establishing dominance in the smartwatch category, is accelerating its own push into AI-enabled wearables. Google, which absorbed Fitbit to shore up its position on the wrist, and OpenAI, which has signalled ambitions in consumer devices, are both intensifying efforts in adjacent hardware categories. For Meta, standing aside while rivals embed AI into everyday objects carries its own strategic cost.

Health tracking has become the battleground feature for wearables, with devices now monitoring everything from heart rhythms to sleep quality and stress indicators. Apple Watch generated an estimated $41bn in revenue in 2025, underscoring both the scale of the opportunity and the depth of the moat Meta would need to overcome. Samsung and Google have carved out secondary positions, but the market remains heavily consolidated around Apple’s ecosystem.

Meta’s advantage, if any, lies in distribution. With more than 3.5 billion daily active users across Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Threads, the company has an unparalleled platform to market a wearable device and seed it with AI interactions drawn from services users already rely on daily.

Whether that translates into hardware loyalty is a different question. Meta’s association in consumer minds with social media rather than health, fitness or personal technology remains a genuine obstacle. The company will need to persuade buyers that a smartwatch bearing its name belongs on their wrist — a trust problem that no amount of AI integration can entirely solve.

Take Out

The Malibu 2 launch, if it proceeds, will be the most consequential hardware bet Meta has made since the Quest headset. It will also serve as the clearest test yet of whether Zuckerberg’s vision of AI as a physical, wearable presence in everyday life is one that consumers are ready to share.

Meta faces a significant uphill battle to launch a competent smartwatch. So great a challenge I would expect them to fail unless pigygbacking on the work of an existing player with a mature platform.

Last Updated on 19 February 2026 by the5krunner

the5krunner

tfk is the founder and author of the5krunner, an independent endurance sports technology publication. With 20 years of hands-on testing of GPS watches and wearables, and competing in triathlons at an international age-group level, tfk provides in-depth expert analysis of fitness technology for serious athletes and endurance sport competitors.