Smart-glasses expansion brings sales and margin pressure
EssilorLuxottica's partnership with Meta divides the work between eyewear and software. The French-based company designs the glasses, develops their frames and optics, and manages retail distribution; Meta provides the software. Their Ray-Ban Meta and Oakley Meta products sold more than 7 million units in 2025, according to EssilorLuxottica's full-year earnings report.
The company, headquartered just outside Paris, was created by the 2018 merger of France's Essilor and Italy's Luxottica. Its established distribution business remains an advantage in selling smart glasses. In an October 7, 2026, analysis, Third Bridge identified its network of 15,000 to 18,000 physical stores and wholesalers as a key competitive strength, noting that 60% to 70% of smart-glasses purchases still take place in stores.
Third Bridge contrasted 2025 sales with the 2 million AI glasses sold in 2023 and 2024 combined. It also cited early-2026 reports that Meta and EssilorLuxottica were considering increasing annual production capacity from 10 million to 20 million units by the end of 2026. That was a capacity proposal, not a completed expansion.
Higher sales came with pressure on margins. EssilorLuxottica's adjusted gross margin declined by 2.6 percentage points to 60.9% in 2025. According to Third Bridge, management attributed roughly two-thirds of that decline to AI glasses.
The partners added prescription-focused Ray-Ban Meta Optics frames in March 2026, followed in June by Meta Glasses, a lower-priced collection starting at $299. Third Bridge said entry-level, non-prescription models still accounted for roughly 80% of smart-glasses volume, while 45% to 50% of the global population needs vision correction.
BeReal builds revenue under Voodoo
BeReal's financial position has changed since French mobile game company Voodoo acquired it for €500 million in 2024. At the time, the app was losing approximately $3 million a month. In annual results published March 11, 2026, Voodoo reported that BeReal brought in €30 million in 2025 revenue, compared with essentially none when it was acquired.
Voodoo said BeReal's audience had stabilized in France and was growing strongly in Japan. It also outlined a path to profitability by 2027, rather than reporting that the app was already profitable. Although BeReal has not retained its earlier audience scale, it still has around 40 million monthly active users.
Two former GoPro employees launched BeReal in 2020. Its defining feature is a daily notification sent at an unpredictable time, asking users to photograph what they are doing rather than choose their own posting moment. By 2022, it had reached 15 million daily active users, ranked among the most downloaded apps in the United States and several European countries, and won Apple's app-of-the-year recognition. Its spontaneous approach attracted a large Gen Z following.
BeReal now sits within a much larger mobile business. Voodoo reported 2025 revenue of $778 million, up 16% from the previous year, and described itself as France's largest scale-up by both revenue and profit. The company reported 169 million monthly active users, a 12% increase, alongside 1.5 billion downloads during 2025 and more than 8 billion since its founding.
Withings reaches profitability as medical devices lead revenue
Withings announced on June 30, 2026, that it had achieved full-year profitability in 2025. The United States was its largest market, and FDA-cleared medical devices supplied 66% of its total revenue that year. The company also reported 15 million active users worldwide and €61 million ($71.42 million) in funding since 2019.
Founded in 2008, the independent French health technology company started with smart body scales. It has since added hybrid smartwatches, activity trackers, thermometers and medical sample processing equipment. Nokia acquired Withings in 2016; founder Eric Carreel bought it back in 2018.
A €53 million funding round in 2020, backed by several French entities, was intended to develop remote medical monitoring devices and an application for sharing patient information. Withings said it devoted 20% to 27% of annual revenue to research and development throughout 2018 to 2025. It characterized that spending rate as roughly twice the consumer electronics industry average and closer to pharmaceutical R&D intensity.
Its Health Solutions business-to-business division accounts for 17% of total revenue. By mid-2026, more than 740,000 patients were enrolled in its monitoring programs, according to Withings, compared with approximately 25,500 before Carreel's 2018 buyback.
AI dominates French startup funding
These consumer businesses operate within a French technology sector supported by La French Tech, the government initiative responsible for implementing policies to help the industry grow internationally. Recent investment and support have emphasized AI, biotech, quantum computing and space technology.
Figures published by The French Tech Journal on January 12, 2026, illustrate the concentration of funding. It tracked 686 French startup funding rounds in 2025 totaling €8.2 billion, with AI and machine learning accounting for €5.18 billion, or 62.5% of all funding.
