Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang gushes over Meta's new 'Orion' prototype glasses

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Meta Connect 2024 holographic glasses Jensen Huang
Jensen Huang tried out the holographic glasses in a video screened at Meta Connect.Meta
  • In a video shown Wednesday at Meta Connect, Nvidia's Jensen Huang praised Meta's new Orion prototype.

  • Huang highlighted some of the features of the glasses and their 100-gram weight.

  • Mark Zuckerberg screened the video of prominent names reacting to the holographic glasses.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang was one of several big names to try out Meta's new Orion prototype glasses in a video shown at Meta's Connect event on Wednesday — and he appeared to be a fan.

To demonstrate the good impression the glasses have had on those who have tried them, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg screened a video of people's reactions after wearing them. The video featured prominent Silicon Valley names, media personalities, and Olympians.

The Nvidia CEO, who was one of the testers, referred to the glasses' 100-gram weight as "a big deal" and complimented various aspects of the technology.

"The tracking is good, the brightness is good, the color contrast is good, field of view is excellent," Huang said in the video shown at the event.

The Orion glasses are the company's first prototype of full holographic augmented reality, and Zuckerberg referred to them as the "most advanced glasses the world has ever seen."

Zuckerberg started putting together a team of the "best people in the world" about a decade ago to build the glasses, he said. He added that the technical challenges to making them were "insane."

"This is the physical world where holograms overlayed on it," Zuckerberg said.

The Meta CEO named several of the challenges with building the glasses, like the need for a wide field of view while keeping them light. He added that you needed to be able to see through them.

Zuckerberg said the glasses were made from a new kind of display architecture that uses tiny projectors that bend light to create holograms of different depths and sizes. The glasses are powered by a battery in the arm, made of customized silicon and sensors.

He said the Orion holographic glasses weren't ready for consumers yet as Meta was refining some of the details and working on lowering the retail price. However, some external developers will be able to get access.

Huang's compliments are somewhat of a big deal. Nvidia is one of the most valuable companies in the world, and its graphics processing units are powering the AI revolution. Given the company's cultlike following, Huang's words also carry a lot of weight in the tech world and stock market.

But it's also worth noting that Zuckerberg is a big Nvidia client. The Meta CEO has bragged about stockpiling GPUs to build a "massive amount of infrastructure" to further the company's artificial-intelligence efforts.

In an interview with The Verge, Zuckerberg said that when Meta's Nvidia components and other AI chips were accounted for, Meta would have nearly 600,000 GPUs by the end of 2024.

Nvidia declined a request for comment from Business Insider.

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