Meta has been working on its AR glasses project for 10 years.

True if evidence shows that Meta (including Facebook/Oculus Reality Labs) began work on the AR glasses project (the effort that produced Orion) roughly 10 years before September 2024, that is around 2014–2016. Mostly true if the work began about 8–12 years before. Mostly false if the dedicated AR glasses work began much later (for example only around 2017–2019) but rests on earlier related AR/VR research. False if the project started within about the last five years.

Set before the research began.

1. E1 Developing Meta's Orion AR Glasses InfoQ · 14 November 2025 Own record

   “About a decade ago, I started putting together a team of the best people in the world to build these glasses.”

2. E2 Meta's VR Headset and AR Glasses Plans For the Next Four Years Just Leaked Gizmodo · 1 March 2023

   “Meta’s Orion glasses have been in development for eight years, and employees will get to test the glasses sometime next year.”

3. E3 Zero to One: How Our Custom Silicon & Chips Are Revolutionizing AR Meta (Reality Labs blog) · 5 March 2025 Own record

   “In 2017, Reality Labs Chief Scientist Michael Abrash, backed by Meta Founder & CEO Mark Zuckerberg, established a new, secret team within what was then Oculus Research to build the foundation of the next computing platform.”

4. E4 Introducing Orion, Our First True Augmented Reality Glasses Meta · 25 September 2024 Own record

   “Five years ago, we announced to the world that we were building AR glasses.”

Gizmodo, an independent source, reported in March 2023 that Orion had been in development for eight years [E2]. That puts the start around 2015, roughly ten years before September 2024. A speaker in a later Meta presentation said they began building the glasses team about a decade earlier [E1], which matches, though the source is not independent of Meta. Meta's own blog dates a secret foundational team within Oculus Research to 2017 [E3], though it does not say when the wider AR glasses project began. Because of that later start date, the claim is rated mostly true rather than fully true.