Yuan 1997! Alibaba Qianwen AI glasses are here, creating another super entry point?

Qwen is stepping out of the phone.

After a national subsidy price of 1,999 yuan, a 40-gram body, and directly competing with Ray-Ban Meta—Alibaba’s personal AI assistant “Qwen”’s first hardware product suddenly appeared at MWC2026.

At the event, Qwen AI glasses not only secured a larger booth than Meta but also displayed a towering 5-meter-high “Qwen” banner, attracting many overseas visitors to line up for demos.

On March 2nd, Qwen AI glasses opened a nationwide “0 yuan reservation,” with in-stock sales starting on March 8th.

In the hot AI hardware race of 2026, Alibaba’s approach remains distinctly “Alibaba”: extreme cost performance, internal integration, and deep binding to the service ecosystem.

More “Thoughtful” Glasses

If your understanding of AI glasses is still limited to “Bluetooth headphones with cameras” or “geek toys,” the product unveiled by Qwen this time might change your view.

At the Qwen AI glasses booth, a visitor from the US praised the replaceable battery design as “brilliant,” significantly reducing battery anxiety, and said, “You can basically use smart services all day long with it, which is impressive.”

Qwen AI glasses launched two main series: S1 and G1. The flagship G1 series aims to find the greatest common divisor between “lightweight” and “high performance.”

To encourage users to wear them from morning to night, the G1 series weighs about 40 grams. This weight approaches the comfort of traditional optical glasses, combined with an adjustable swan neck support and FDA food-grade silicone nose pads, attempting to solve the “wearing fatigue” issue common in smart glasses.

Despite the lightweight body, Qwen packed dual flagship chips, a five-microphone array with bone conduction technology, and high-performance large-diaphragm speakers to ensure accurate voice command pickup even in noisy environments.

Photography is another key feature. G1 can capture shots in 0.6 seconds, record 3K videos, and even output 4K quality through AI algorithms.

What truly sets these glasses apart from other hardware is the upcoming “task execution” feature, launching at the end of March.

During the Spring Festival, Qwen App users experienced “order a milk tea with one sentence” and “book a hotel with one sentence.” Data shows nearly 200 million “one-sentence orders” during the holiday. Now, this capability has been transferred to the glasses, and in the future, users may only need to speak a sentence to complete tasks.

This closed loop from “large model Q&A” to “full-chain execution” is a moat that pure hardware manufacturers find hard to copy. Qwen revealed that by the end of March, users will be able to experience these “task” functions on the glasses.

In terms of pricing strategy, Alibaba demonstrated its usual aggressive approach in the consumer market. The G1 series is officially priced at 2,899 yuan, but in 2026, the government included smart glasses in the first “trade-in” national subsidy catalog. Coupled with local “national subsidy” policies, merchant discounts, and exclusive coupons on the Qwen app, the effective price drops to 1,997 yuan.

2,000 yuan is widely regarded as the psychological threshold for AI glasses to shift from “geek novelty” to “mass consumption.” This pricing will accelerate Qwen glasses’ market penetration.

Alibaba’s Hardware Puzzle

This is not Alibaba’s first release of AI glasses.

In July 2025, Quark showcased its first self-developed AI glasses at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference, officially launched in November of the same year, also integrated with the Qwen large model. Four months later, the same team released glasses under the “Qwen” brand.

Recently, Alibaba stated that Quark AI glasses and Qwen AI glasses are backed by the same algorithms and the same hardware/software team, with subsequent series and global branding maintained as “Qwen.” The already launched Quark glasses will receive the same updates as Qwen glasses, and more capabilities of the Qwen AI assistant will be added in the future.

As early as December last year, Alibaba merged its original Intelligent Information and Intelligent Connectivity Business Group to form a new “Qwen C-end Business Group,” including Qwen App, Quark, AI hardware, UC browser, and Shuqi. The core logic of this restructuring is brand unification and strategic focus.

Alibaba mentioned internally that the primary goal of the Qwen C-end Business Group is to develop Qwen into a super app, becoming the first entry point for users in the AI era. In the future, Qwen will further evolve into an omnipresent AI assistant across glasses, PCs, cars, and other scenarios.

As Alibaba Group CEO Wu Yongming said, the greatest imagination for AI is not just creating a few new super apps on mobile screens, but taking over the digital world and transforming the physical world. Glasses have become his chosen first vanguard.

IDC predicts that in 2026, China’s smart glasses shipment volume will grow 78% year-over-year to 4.51 million units. This explosive growth has attracted nearly all tech giants. At MWC2026, besides Alibaba Qwen, Google partnered with Xreal to launch Project Aura, and Meta showcased its latest Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses. Industry experts generally believe this is the fastest AI hardware to enter mass consumer markets.

However, from a hardware layout perspective, AI glasses are just Alibaba’s first move. According to insiders, within this year, Qwen will also launch products like AI rings and AI earbuds, all targeting the global market.

Entry points as services, hardware as channels. For Alibaba, AI glasses are another “super entry point” after smartphones, capable of supporting Alipay payments, Gaode navigation, and local lifestyle services. Through all-day wear, Alibaba can collect vast amounts of first-person multimodal data, which will become valuable “nourishment” for Qwen model iterations, forming a data flywheel.

Of course, challenges exist. A senior product person told reporters that the AI glasses industry still faces the “impossible triangle” of lightweight, long battery life, and high performance. The necessary scenarios are not yet fully formed, and the application ecosystem remains relatively closed. Even a powerful G1 still needs real-world testing after launch.

In 2026, Alibaba will face even fiercer competition. Meta plans to increase annual capacity to 20 million units, Google is returning to the field, and ByteDance, Huawei, and Xiaomi are gearing up. The AI glasses race has entered a “hundred glasses battle” phase.

However, for Alibaba, this step is essential. The past half-year of Quark’s testing, organizational restructuring, model capability maturation, and ecosystem integration have all laid the groundwork for this move.

After the in-stock release on March 8th, the market will give its first answer.