HTC bets on open AI smartglasses with multi-model VIVE Eagle

HTC’s VIVE Eagle is notable less for the hardware than for the platform stance: it’s one of the first mainstream smartglasses to treat AI assistants as interchangeable, pluggable services. By supporting Gemini, OpenAI and potentially others on a single device, HTC is betting that users will want to swap between models the way they switch apps today. If that mindset spreads, it weakens the lock‑in ambitions of vertically integrated ecosystems like Meta’s smartglasses and pushes the frontier labs to compete on capability, latency and cost more than on hardware bundling.([reuters.com](https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/htc-bets-its-open-ai-strategy-drive-smartglasses-sales-2025-12-22/))

From an AGI‑race perspective, this is another small step toward “embodied” AI in daily life: cameras, microphones and displays on your face, backed by high‑end models in the cloud. While VIVE Eagle itself won’t move the frontier, it expands the installed base of AI‑native devices that can justify continued investment in real‑time multimodal inference. It also highlights the geopolitical twist: HTC is cautious about entering mainland China because foreign AI services face data‑localization and access barriers there.

If multi‑model hardware takes hold, it could give second‑tier labs an on‑ramp to end users without owning a device platform, while forcing the big players to optimize for interoperability rather than walled gardens.