Co-Founder, CEO & Director, Snap
Snap Keynote at AWE USA 2026: Making Computing More Human with Evan Spiegel, Snap Co-Founder and CEO
Snap Inc. co-founder and CEO Evan Spiegel will headline Augmented World Expo (AWE) USA 2026 with a keynote address titled “Making Computing More Human.” The keynote will take place on Tuesday, June 16 from 9:30 - 10:00 a.m. PT on AWE’s Main Stage in Long Beach, California.
Throughout AWE, Specs Inc. will celebrate the innovation and creativity of its developer community, unveil new tools for building the next generation of computing, and demonstrate the latest advancements across the SPECS platform. Additional Specs Inc. sessions will be added to the AWE conference agenda over the coming week...
About Evan Spiegel
In June 2026, Spiegel unveiled Specs, Snap's consumer augmented reality glasses, at the Augmented World Expo. He described Specs as "a new type of computer" designed to "put computing into the world around you" and characterized them as distinct from both AI smart glasses and mixed reality headsets. He stated that the glasses are meant to address what he described as people spending excessive time staring at screens and feeling distracted from the real world. The device, priced at $2,195, was made available for pre-order with shipping expected in the fall. Spiegel said the company had spent more than 12 years working toward the product's consumer launch and described 2026 as a "crucible moment" for Snap, citing the company's progress toward reaching nearly one billion monthly active users and the milestone of net income profitability. On earnings calls and in interviews, Spiegel addressed investor concerns about the pricing and market for Specs, comparing them to high-end computers and laptops. He also discussed the company's cost-cutting measures, which included a reduction in annualized cost structure by more than $500 million, and the ongoing challenges of being compared to larger social media companies. In discussions about the role of AI in software development, Spiegel stated that "the entire way that software is written now has changed profoundly" and expressed a belief that humans would not be writing code within the next year.
Transcript (27 segments)
✨ AI-enhanced transcript with speaker attribution
E
Evan Spiegel28:46
Good morning, AWE. Oh my goodness, it is so great to be here. I have been looking forward to this day for such a long time and I'm just so grateful to have the opportunity to share it with all of you. I'm Evan Spiegel, the co-founder and CEO of Snap, Inc. And I've spent most of my working life trying to advance augmented reality and make computing feel a bit more human. And I know so many people in this room have been working towards that exact same future. A future where computing is part of our lives. Not pulling us away from each other and into screens, but helping us learn, play, work, and share in the world around us. And that's what makes this community so inspiring. You have believed in this future before it was obvious and you kept on building. So, thank you.
You know, when I was a kid, I fell in love with computers. And I loved that a computer could take something in your imagination and help you make it real. And suddenly an idea that only existed in your head could exist out in the world. And that feeling really inspired me. And it's why I feel so fortunate to be working on what I believe is the next major leap in computing from phones to glasses.
The smartphone revolution changed my life. And in fact, back in 2012, when I was still wearing V-necks, Bobby and I built Snapchat because the app store made it possible for our small team to reach nearly a billion people around the world. And Steve Jobs was my hero. He was so focused on making computers easier to use, more accessible, and he wanted all of us to benefit from computers. And at the original iPhone launch, I'll never forget it. He promised your life in your pocket. And boy, was he right. It was magic. Your friends, photos, music, and maps, all of it in one beautiful little device you could carry everywhere.
But almost 20 years later, I think we have to ask ourselves, what happens when the device that helped us connect starts pulling our attention away from the people sitting directly across from us? And what happens when computing becomes something we look down into instead of something that helps us to look up? And the smartphone put our lives in our pockets. But augmented reality puts computing into the world where life actually happens. And that is the shift from phones to specs.
And if augmented reality is the technology that makes that possible, then the hardware really matters. And there's an old saying, if you're serious about software, you have got to build your own hardware. So for more than a decade, Snap has been investing in every layer of the stack to make computing more human. Developer tools, our own operating system, displays, optics, and along the way, we've invented new ways for people to communicate and express themselves. From ephemeral messaging to vertical video to stories and lenses. And now many of our inventions are used by billions of people across the world every single day.
12 years ago, we saw the opportunity for something different. A computer you can wear, see through, and use in the moment. And specs are built from the ground up for augmented reality. A computer that understands the world around you instead of pulling you out of it. And this is the future we're building. And I know so many of you are building it with us. So before I show you specs, I want to start with the people who make our platform really matter. You, more than 450,000 developers who have built over 5 million lenses with Snap's augmented reality tools.
Because a new computer is never defined by hardware alone. The PC became meaningful because developers built software. The smartphone became meaningful because developers built apps. And specs will become meaningful because of the lenses that you build. And that's why we've been working so closely with our developer community over the past year and a half, listening carefully to your feedback, we've shipped 10 Snap OS updates with more than 40 new features and APIs. And developers have already published hundreds of lenses for specs. And every lens helps us learn more about what this new computer can become. So, let me show you a few examples of what's possible on specs with the lenses that you've built. Take a look.
You all have built some amazing lenses. And what I love about these experiences is that they are something totally new. They belong in the world around you and they respond to the space you're in. They help people share experiences together and they are all built in Lens Studio. Lens Studio started as a tool for making lenses on Snapchat, but today it's a powerful developer environment for real-world immersive and connected experiences. So, we gave the logo a little makeover to get it ready for specs.
Lens Studio has scene understanding and spatial mapping that lets developers build experiences that respond to the environment. Like Grow Pile's escape room, the Lens understands the room around you, so walls, furniture, and open space can become part of the experience. Connected lenses let people share experiences with nearby friends and family like fruit defense where people play together. Where people play together around physical objects in the same room. And because real objects on the table are tracked, they become part of the experience. And SnapCloud helps developers offload heavy assets and build more dynamic experiences like Big Marble, a multi-level marble battle game built with custom physics and collision system. And with APIs from OpenAI and Gemini, developers can build lenses that see, understand, and respond to the real world in real time, like Handyman AI, which gives you visual guidance right where you need it.
And that's what gets me excited about AI and AR together. Not intelligence trapped in a chat box. Intelligence that can see what you see, understand what you're trying to do, and help you in the moment. And in just the last few months, AI has dramatically changed the way developers build software. So today, we're introducing agentic development in Lens Studio. It's designed to help you explore ideas, build prototypes, test, debug, optimize, publish, and keep improving your lens after it ships. And we know many of you already have your own AI development workflows. So, starting today, we're rolling out the developer preview in Claude Code, Codex, and Cursor. And that means you can bring Lens Studio agents and skills directly into the tools that you already use.
Because AI is becoming a core part of how these experiences are built, we're also releasing the specs spatial benchmark to evaluate how different models perform across real world spatial tasks. There are seven reasoning categories including coordinate and geometric math, transformation and perspective, and spatial arrangement and layout. And in our first benchmark, GPT 5.5 performed best overall across these categories with Gemini 3 flash preview and Kimmy K2.6 close behind.
Now, for years, our partners and developers have asked us to make it easier to bring their existing projects built with tools like Unity into Lens Studio. So today we're introducing the migration agent. And it acts as an intelligent translation layer to map your visual components and engine features directly into Lens Studio native implementations. And we're also announcing the native development kit so developers can bring their own code and existing libraries into Lens Studio with support for native C and C++ libraries, direct access to platform capabilities like camera, media and networking, and a complete tool chain for specs. Developers can easily bring high performance cross-platform experiences to life. Partners like Niantic and Mapbox are already using our NDK to bring their technologies into lenses and accelerate development time. For example, Mapbox ported their navigation engine in less than two hours.
So whether you're starting from scratch or bringing something you've already built, we're making it easier than ever to create for specs. My co-founder Bobby will go much deeper into these tools later today right here on the main stage at 1 p.m. So don't miss it.
And all of this work has been building towards the next generation of specs. A very different kind of computer. Light enough to wear, powerful enough to understand the world, fast enough to make digital objects feel real, and natural enough to get out of the way. So, let me show you how we've thought about specs. Devices today force a difficult trade-off between capability and wearability. And AI glasses are wearable, but they're very limited in their capability. And headsets are capable, but they're uncomfortable to wear, and they shut you out of the world. And down here, not wearable, certainly not capable, is a potato. But up and to the right are specs designed to be both wearable and highly capable. Wearable enough for real life and capable enough for rich spatial computing. Everything you need is on board. No puck, no tether. And now I'm so excited because you are going to be one of the first in the world to see specs. You ready? All right, let's go.
Introducing Specs, a new kind of computer designed for real life and built into see-through glasses. And they're just gorgeous. Let's start from the moment that you put them on. Specs are made from high performance Swiss TR90 polymer. We call it plastic titanium, light enough to be worn for hours. And that matters because if a computer is going to be part of everyday life, it has to feel natural. And specs come in two sizes. The 47 millimeter frame weighs just 132 grams and the 52 millimeter frame weighs 136 grams. And they support a wide range of prescriptions that can be inserted and removed so you can see clearly and easily share your specs with friends and family.
Now, let's talk about what you can see through specs. Specs feature a new proprietary optical engine with a liquid crystal on silicon display that delivers one of the richest and most immersive visual experiences today. And the glass that carries light from the display to your eyes is called the waveguide. And our new waveguide uses billions of invisibly small nanostructures. So small that more than 10,000 can fit on the tip of a single hair. And they guide light exactly where it needs to go, creating a big bright image and an immersive 51 degree field of view. And that's equivalent to a 24-inch desktop display or a 5-inch home cinema screen placed about 10 feet away. And you get 16 million colors for sharper contrast and richer, smoother visuals.
Now, check this out. Specs use the same advanced technology found in Boeing 787 Dreamliner windows. And the electrochromic lenses gently shift from clear to tinted in just 10 seconds. And across the full optical stack, we've driven a nearly 35% increase in transparency so you can see the world clearly and crisply through the waveguide. And that matters because specs are not designed to replace the world. They're designed to bring computing into it. For digital content to feel real, specs have to understand the world and respond instantly. So specs use two Snapdragon processors, one for computer vision and one dedicated to running lenses. And together this efficient architecture powers the advanced capabilities of specs. It enables high-speed hand tracking with lower latency and lower power consumption. So interactions feel more natural. Digital content feels grounded and battery life goes further. And verified by advanced robotic measurement systems, specs deliver a truly remarkable 7 millisecond motion to photon latency.
And that means when you move, the digital overlay keeps up quickly enough to feel like it really belongs there. And that's what allows specs to anchor lenses in the real world. Now, the most important thing about specs is not any single technical spec. It's how naturally they fit into the flow of your day. Specs can bring powerful real world tools into your view exactly when you need them. Directions can appear as you move through a city, a station, or a building. And measurements can line up with the space right in front of you. Real time translation keeps you in the conversation and suggestions can appear in context instead of being buried in a search result or a how-to video. And that's the power of spatial computing.
Specs provide a beautiful private display wherever you are. I'm excited, too. It's going to be awesome. You can watch a movie, browse the web, or expand your laptop display. And because specs are see-through, you're not sealed off from the world. You can look away, talk to someone, stay aware of what's happening around you, and come back to your content right where you left it. You can cast your screen, open a whiteboard, put ideas in space, and for people who move between places at home, at work, on a train, in a hotel room, that changes what a workspace can be.
And then there are the hundreds of lenses that simply could never have existed before. For example, specs can help you read the green while you practice your putt. Drum kit overlays interactive lessons onto your drum set, making it easier than ever to learn, practice, and improve. Vector fields can make invisible forces visible, helping students understand motion, pressure, and flow in the space around them. Because AR doesn't just make old software more convenient. It makes new experiences possible. Experiences that are useful, shared, playful, and full of wonder.
And with all this capability, battery life is really important. So, we designed specs for a range of ways you might use them throughout your day. Specs offer up to 4 hours of mixed-use battery life, including audio and video playback, AI assistance, lenses, Bluetooth notifications, and more. And the custom charging cable snaps into place magnetically so you can easily power specs while wearing them for extended use. And that same charging interface also supports streaming video over USB-C when you use the display cable to connect your specs to your computer, your phone or gaming device to use them as a large immersive display. And the included charging case offers four charges on the go, giving you up to 20 total hours of mixed use.
So put simply, specs are the most capable and most wearable AR glasses ever built. And those copycats up north aren't going to be stealing this one. We've filed more than 7,000 patents throughout the development of specs. And as we bring computing into a form this personal, trust is just as important as capability. Specs are designed to see and understand the world around you. And it's why privacy has to be built in from the very beginning.
Specs only work if people trust them. So, we've kept our approach simple. Specs ask clearly before accessing sensitive information. The LED light glows when someone is recording. They protect data by design, prioritizing on-device processing, and they give people control over what gets stored, synced, shared, or deleted.
Now, we're going to share a lot more about specs, including major updates to our operating system and maybe a few other surprises later this fall. But first, we thought you might want to hear from a few developers who are already building with specs.
You can join the specs developer community today and start building with the new Lens Studio agents and skills. You can apply to test your lens prototypes on specs at one of our studios around the world. And at launch, Commerce Kit will begin powering in-lens subscriptions and purchases so you can build real businesses on specs. Yes.
Now, new computers almost always begin as something that just a few people can really afford. When Apple introduced the Macintosh in 1984, it cost $2,495. And adjusted for inflation, that would be close to $8,000 today. And more recently, spatial computers like the Vision Pro or HoloLens have started around $3,500. So, we gave ourselves a very difficult challenge. Specs had to be capable. They had to be wearable. They had to be more accessible than any other spatial computer has ever been before. So today we're introducing specs for $2,195. You can pre-order today at specs.com and they're expected to ship this fall.
Now before we close, I wanted to share one more thing. Today we're launching a global campaign shot by the legendary photographer Steven Meisel and featuring an amazing group of visionaries who have been so much fun to work with. Jimmy Butler, Image and Heap, Hoyan, Jack Harlow, and Kaia Gerber. And over the past several months, we've been working together to imagine new experiences for specs that will debut this fall. And each visionary brings a unique perspective on how specs can support creativity, expression, presence, and play. And this is just the beginning. Together, we will create something truly special. A future where computing empowers us, brings us closer together, and reconnects us with the world around us. I could not be more grateful to all of you for being our partners on this journey. Thank you so much.