From military displays to AI smart glasses: Hong Kong-raised entrepreneur sets sights on future
- Hong Kong-based Solos Technology prepares to take on the Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses with AirGo V, as Harvard-trained founder John Fan touts city’s design prowess
The Solos AirGo V will immediately evoke a sense of deja vu for industry watchers more familiar with the frames that Ray-Ban collaborated on with the owner of Facebook. But John Fan Chin-chiang believes that he has an edge with his Hong Kong-based company, Solos Technology, spun out of a firm he started in Massachusetts in 1985.
“Hong Kong is the centre for eyeglasses – design, manufacturing – and I think people miss it,” Fan said. “My rule No 1: you have to be eyeglasses-first before you worry about ‘smart’.”
Like the most recent iteration of the Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses, the AirGo V frames incorporate a camera that allows people to query AI models of their choosing about what they see around them. Fan pitched his glasses as the more fashionable, lighter product, saying they weigh just 30 grams compared with the 49 grams of the Ray-Ban frames.
The Solos app also offers plenty of AI options from different companies to choose from, including the latest GPT-4 and 4o models from OpenAI and different versions of Google’s Gemini and Anthropic’s Claude. Solos has to pay separately for the use of each model, according to a company representative at an unveiling event in Hong Kong on June 28. Users will get a three-month free trial, after which they will be charged for a subscription, the person said.
Solos has not yet set a release date for its latest glasses, but it said it is targeting a December launch.
