It’s official: Alibaba is entering the smart glasses game. After rumors that percolated late last week, Alibaba unveiled its official plans to put out frames that look awfully similar to Meta’s Ray-Bans, but with a few key advantages that could help them blow way past U.S. competition.

The smart glasses, called Quark AI, are actually a lot more similar to Meta’s Ray-Bans than I expected. For one, they do not feature a display of any kind and instead focus more on here-and-now features like calling, audio, translation, and using a built-in camera to take pictures. If those all sound like familiar capabilities, it’s because Meta’s Ray-Bans can do all of those things. If you’re reading that with deflation, I wouldn’t blame you, given how advanced China’s smart glasses field has become and the resources that Alibaba has at its disposal. But just because those capabilities are similar doesn’t mean Quark AI can’t push the ball forward.

Alibaba just previewed its first AI-powered smart glasses — Quark — at WAIC 2025 in Shanghai.

🔹 Built on the Qwen model series
🔹 Qualcomm AR1 + low-power dual system chip
🔹 Seamless Alipay, Taobao, and Amap integration
🔹 40% slimmer than current market glasses pic.twitter.com/SOXsZOrWw3

— Wes Roth (@WesRothMoney) July 28, 2025

For one, Alibaba, unlike Meta, has access to different services that Meta doesn’t. Among those is Alipay, which is a popular mobile payment service used predominantly in China but is becoming more widely accepted worldwide. As we’ve already seen in other smart glasses, like Xiaomi’s recent entrant, that integration opens the door for some cool (and maybe concerning) mobile payment features. Similar to Xiaomi’s smart glasses, Alibaba says Quark AI supports Alipay for purchasing things using QR codes. If it’s anything like Xiaomi’s feature—and I’m almost certain it is—users will use the camera to scan a QR code and then use the glasses’ voice assistant to confirm payment. If it works as promised, that gives Alibaba’s glasses one more advantage over Meta. Oh, also, these are 40% smaller than other similar smart glasses on the market, according to Alibaba, which is great for anyone who doesn’t want to look like they’re wearing a gadget on their face.

And it’s not just mobile payments where Alibaba may have the edge in more feature-rich smart glasses. Alibaba also shared plans to integrate navigation into its glasses, which is an area where I find Meta’s Ray-Bans to be sorely lacking. I’ve been using Meta’s Ray-Bans for almost a year now, and while I can load up Google Maps on my phone and pipe in step-by-step navigation through its Bluetooth audio, it’s not the same as doing all of that natively. While I can’t say for sure, Alibaba’s glasses, with a tighter integration of GPS, may be able to launch navigation natively by prompting the glasses with a voice command. That may seem small, but it goes a long way in making smart glasses feel actually smart.

It’s hard to say for sure just where Alibaba will bring its smart glasses when they actually get released, and there’s still a lot we don’t know, including price, details on camera quality, battery life, and all that very important technical stuff. But from a possibility perspective, it’s hard not to recognize a lot of potential for Meta-crushing functionality. If Quark AI is half as capable as Xiaomi’s entrant into the space, I’d say Meta has a lot of catching up to do with its third-gen Ray-Ban smart glasses.