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Hello and welcome back to Equity TechCrunch's flagship podcast about the business of startups.

Today is Friday, September 19th.

I'm Kirsten Koresak, transportation editor at TechCrunch.

And I'm joined, as always, with senior AI reporter Max Zeth and weekend editor, Anthony Ha.

It was a late night last night, Max, for, well, mostly for you.

That's true.

That's true.

So I was at MetaConnect yesterday, where they unveiled new smart glasses with a screen in the right

lens and they're controlled by a neural wristband that tracks micro movements between your brain

and your hand.

And this was a big deal for Meta.

This is kind of an ambitious product for them. It's a lot more compelling than VR headsets, frankly.

But there is a kind of a question around, is this enough to really kind of compete with Apple and Google and all these other hardware manufacturers out there?

I guess I have a similar question, but coming at it from a slightly different angle, which is just that it, you know, all the headlines about meta that, I think even you

write nowadays are mostly about the insane amounts of money they're spending in AI. So to what

extent, I mean, is this even an area that they're still committed to versus just something that's

become relegated to a side project? Well, glad you asked, because the pitch of Metacenect this year was basically about how

AI and AR are going to fuse together and how AR smart glasses are the perfect,

synergy, the perfect way to distribute superintelligence through the world.

...