All about the Specs AR glasses, with Snap CEO Evan Spiegel

Snap co-founder and CEO Evan Spiegel — who, at 36, is still young for a tech leader even by Silicon Valley wunderkind standards — unveiled Snap's new Specs AR Glasses at the Augmented World Expo in Long Beach, California on Tuesday. That's where Mashable spoke to Spiegel about the new AR glasses, ways to protect users' privacy, and their intimidating $2,195 price tag.Snap has released five generations of its Spectacles since 2016, but Specs push smart glasses into new territory.

Unlike most augmented reality products, Specs don't have a computing puck or USB-C tether, and feature a proprietary liquid-crystal-on-silicon display. The new smart glasses are scheduled to ship this fall. Spiegel also introduced a kit for developers who want to create products, apps, and experiences for Specs.

Mashable Enterprise Editor Neal Broverman spoke to Spiegel at AWE 2026; the interview has been edited for clarity.Who do you see as Specs’ target customers — creators, gamers, early adopters, all of the above? We're really gonna start with the developer community.

There are already 450,000 people who use Snap’s augmented reality tools, who are so passionate about this new era for computing. And then we'll extend beyond that, with the early adopters and folks who see a lot of value in specific use cases — whether they're trying to improve their golf swing or whether they just want to work on the road and still bring the benefits of that large display or monitor. It's such a new way of computing — such a different way to think about what a computer even is.

And so the big project for us over the next couple of years is just showing people how Specs work, what they do, and really just helping people try them. How do you see these glasses fitting into people's daily lives?I think there are a lot of ways — with three major buckets or categories.

The first would be utility use cases. Things like heads-up directions or translation, when you're exploring a new place. I actually really love t