Author: June, Deep Tide TechFlow
On June 16th, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel officially launched the AR glasses 'Specs' at the Augmented Reality World Expo, priced at $2,195.
On the day of the announcement, SNAP's stock price plummeted nearly 10%, closing at $5.16.
Soon, a popular post appeared on the famous Reddit retail investor community r/wallstreetbets:
The poster called the CEO "brain-dead," compared the company to a "capital furnace," and even asked for someone to post some "pictures of miserable losses" to help him sleep soundly.
He voiced the most direct question for the entire market: How can a company with years of losses stake its turnaround on a pair of glasses that young people can't even afford?
A Product You Might Not Have Used, But Have Certainly Seen
Talking about Snapchat, friends in China might not be very familiar, but you've probably seen this once wildly popular "dog filter":
That virtual puppy sticking out its tongue, with ears moving with the head, was one of the most viral among the Lenses (AR filters) launched by Snapchat in 2015.
The real-time facial tracking technology behind it came from Looksery, a Ukrainian startup acquired by Snap for approximately $150 million that same year. This was the largest acquisition deal in Ukraine's tech history at the time, but the one that truly turned this technology into a global phenomenon, making it a plaything imitated by celebrities and ordinary users alike, was Snapchat.
A Pioneer Repeatedly Copied
To some extent, looking back at Snapchat's history, it reads more like a "history of being copied."
Its pioneering ephemeral Stories feature was almost copied verbatim by Instagram, and now almost every social app has it; its camera-first interface and left-right swipe navigation were adopted by the entire industry for nearly a decade; even its early bet on AR glasses was beaten to the market as a hit product by Meta's Ray-Ban smart glasses.
Time and again, Snapchat stood at the technological forefront but consistently failed to turn "first-mover advantage" into "commercial victory."
This is also evident from its stock performance.
From its all-time high of $83.34 in September 2021, SNAP has plunged by 94% over the past five years, starkly contrasting with the record-breaking U.S. stock market during the same period.
2021 happened to be the peak of the pandemic's benefits but also a turning point. That same year, Apple tightened iOS privacy tracking permissions, directly crippling Snap's core advertising targeting capabilities. In the following years, TikTok and Instagram rose strongly, while Snap, with its persistently weak profitability, never saw its stock price return to its former levels.
Back to the popular post mentioned at the beginning.
Why did Snap's stock price drop immediately after announcing a new product, and why were these AR glasses almost universally ridiculed on X and Reddit?
First, we have to mention its core user base. Snapchat's main users are Gen Z, aged 18 to 24. Selling a $2,195 pair of glasses to a group of young people who largely can't afford them is clearly unrealistic.
Placing it within the context of its peers makes this dilemma clearer.
Also in content and social networking, Meta generates $56.3 billion in revenue and nearly $27 billion in net profit per quarter; ByteDance and Xiaohongshu are also already profitable.
Snapchat alone, despite growing users and revenue, still reported a net loss of $89 million in the first quarter of 2026. It has reported annual net losses every year since its IPO in 2017. The root cause is that young users are not advertisers' most favored demographic; brands prefer to allocate budgets to the main consumer group aged 25 to 45.
Youth, ironically, has become Snap's monetization burden.
A Nearly Decade-Long AR Gamble
In such a predicament, Spiegel chose to double down.
He called 2026 the company's "crucible moment." In April this year, Snap laid off about 1,000 employees, 16% of its workforce, citing AI's ability to handle a large amount of repetitive work.
Simultaneously, the company has accumulated investments exceeding $3.5 billion in the Specs AR glasses product line. Counting from the first-generation Spectacles in 2016, this high-stakes gamble has lasted nearly a decade.
To see how far this decade has taken them, we must go back to that first-generation pair of glasses.
Image: The first-generation glasses from 2016
Launched in September and released in November that year, it was a pair of iconic bright yellow glasses sold via street vending machines, with a camera embedded in the frame. Strictly speaking, it wasn't truly AR; wearing it, you could only record a short circular video hands-free and share it on Snapchat. Essentially, it was more like a fun toy worn on your face.
Image: Specs launched in 2026
Ten years later, Specs can overlay digital information onto real-world scenes, run AI functions, recognize gestures, and operate independently of a phone. From "glasses for recording videos" to "a spatial computer worn on the face," this is a leap spanning a decade, and it's what Spiegel truly wants to bet on.
In this whole event, what truly made investors collectively furious was the pricing, widely considered outrageous.
The question is, what do you get for the extra money?
Compared to the $799 Ray-Ban Display, which only has a small HUD crammed into a corner of the lens, Specs is true AR, capable of overlaying digital content into reality, recognizing gestures, and running independently of a phone. Functionally, it is indeed a tier higher.
But it weighs about 132 grams (almost twice as heavy as the former), has a battery life of only about 4 hours, and its main features—navigation, measurement, AI queries—are things a phone can already do. The $2,195 buys a "category leap," but not necessarily a mature product that fits into daily life. This might be the real source of investor unease.
When activist investor Irenic Capital publicly pressured the company to shut down or spin off the Specs division to preserve cash flow, Spiegel publicly refused, insisting on viewing it as part of the company's long-term model.
Cutting costs by laying off people on one hand, while heavily betting on a vision that hasn't seen a return in a decade on the other.
This is Snapchat's most realistic portrayal at the moment.
Ending
In 2015, Snapchat captivated the world with an AR filter like a virtual puppy; eleven years later today, its heavily-backed AR glasses are almost universally dismissed.
However, not everyone views it as a farce.
Some view it through the lens of mobile phone evolution. From the brick-like "brick phones" to today's smartphones, that path took over thirty years. The currently expensive and heavy Specs might just be an awkward, necessary step before AR glasses mature.
But in an era that generally chases short-term returns and follows the herd, is a persistent entrepreneur like Spiegel a rare anomaly in the industry, or a gambler destined to be eliminated by the market?
This question might be worth answering for every observer themselves.
