Meta Acquires 3% Stake in Essilor Luxottica for €3 Billion

Meta finally seals its entry into the optics giant. Mark Zuckerberg’s company, owner of platforms such as Instagram or WhatsApp, has definitively acquired a minority stake in Essilor Luxottica. The transaction has been valued at €3 billion, and involves the acquisition of just under 3% of the optics giant’s capital.

This equity entry completes a strategy that Meta announced a year ago now, in July 2024, shortly after the tech company launched the second edition of its Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses. As reported by Bloomberg, in addition, the company is also contemplating future investments that would raise the equity stake to 5%.

Both companies launched a first version of their smart wearables in 2021, which allow users to make phone calls, capture and share photos and videos or listen to music, among others. The deal was later replicated in 2023 with a second edition, and more recently, it has also been extended to Oakly, another brand in Essilor Luxottica’s portfolio.

Meta and Essilor Luxottica launched their first smart wearables in 2021.

The plans of the optical giant are, in fact, to increase the production of this type of smart products, and to introduce the technology also to other of its owned companies, which also include Vogue Eyewear, Persol or Oliver Peoples. As part of this strategy, Essilor Luxottica has acquired other small companies in the technology sector, such as Pulse Audition and Nuance Hearing.

“We are proud that a company that knows us very well, after years of alliance, is convinced that our company can grow and do much better in the future,“ said Francesco Milleri, CEO of the group, shortly after Meta’s first announcement a year ago.

In its first quarter of the current financial year, the group posted a turnover of €6.848 billion, up 8% compared to the same period last year. Essilor Luxottica maintains the bulk of its business in North America, Meta’s home country, where it posted sales of 3.079 billion euros, up 7.1% on the previous year.

The new alliance between Meta and Essilor Luxottica joins a growing trend of technology companies expanding their presence in the fashion sector. At the end of June, fellow Internet giant Google reached an agreement to invest $100 million in Gentle Monster, a South Korean eyewear brand that marries optics with artistic expertise, giving it a 4% stake in the company’s capital.