Alibaba has introduced its inaugural smart eyewear—the Quark AI glasses—at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai, preparing to enter a fiercely competitive AI wearables market in China, says this South China Morning Post article. Named after Alibaba’s AI assistant, Quark, these AI-powered glasses leverage the company’s proprietary Qwen large language models. They are being positioned as a new “wearable intelligence” with navigation and payment capabilities, including map integration and Alipay scanning via voice commands.
Alibaba says development is complete and plans a commercial launch in China by the end of 2025, though no precise release date has been confirmed. The debut marks Alibaba’s entry into a smart glasses arena already buzzing with activity from local competitors such as Rokid and Xreal, which have aggressively rolled out their own AI-enhanced wearables.
The move aligns with Alibaba’s broader strategy to deepen its investments in both AI software and hardware; the company has committed an investment of US$53 billion over three years to expand its AI infrastructure and product ecosystem. Executives envision AI glasses as a second set of human senses—and a crucial frontier for next-generation interaction and utility.