If there was one thing that was obvious this from Meta Connect this year, it’s that the social media giant is all-in on its burgeoning line of smart glasses.

Indeed, the glasses were pretty much everywhere at the annual event, where Meta shows off its newest hardware and AI products. Both Meta staff and the flocks of influencers who frequent the event seemed to arrive with the glasses glued to their faces. Most of the demos the company offered this week also involved the glasses.

I swiftly joined the bespectacled masses and found myself trying on pair after pair of Meta’s high-tech specs.

One of the more notable products I had an opportunity to demo were Meta’s new, still-unreleased, audio-only smart glasses. News of these glasses emerged not long after the company weathered accusations that it was selling “pervert glasses,” with critics alleging that its camera-equipped specs could be used for nefarious surveillance purposes.

The new glasses come equipped with six microphones, but no camera, and they have no native way to record your surroundings, which should go a long way toward easing privacy concerns. They are significantly lighter than any of the other smart glasses I’ve worn, and they were quite comfortable.

The Meta staffer I talked to emphasized the glasses’ entertainment and communication options: you can listen to music easily (they’re more comfortable than earbuds) and take phone calls without reaching for your phone.

The glasses will also integrate with Muse, Meta’s personal agentic system, which can carry out tasks on the user’s behalf. The new integration, which isn’t yet available to the public, lets wearers speak to Muse and give it commands verbally. Meta also plans to personalize the agent, letting users pick from an assortment of cute digital avatars that can represent the agent when it communicates with them.

I was given an opportunity to try this out, which was fun but also somewhat comical. You have to be very direct with the agent, and you can’t talk to anyone else at the same time or it will get confused. Problematically, I kept chatting intermittently with the Meta staffer who’d given me the glasses, and the agent kept thinking I was speaking to it, so it would talk over her.

Still, in the right context, it’s easy to see how this new integration could be incredibly useful. If you don’t mind being seen in public talking to your own sunglasses, you’ll be able to ask Muse to take care of various digital tasks for you, like sending emails or reciting to-do lists, and it will handle them while you’re out grocery shopping or having a beer. You can also ask the glasses anything, and like a mobile version of ChatGPT, they’ll spit out an answer. (I asked the glasses a question about World War II, and they gave me a succinct and historically accurate response.)

Finally, I also got to test-drive a second audio-only pair: Meta’s new glasses for the hearing impaired. Given that hearing loss affects many families (some 50 million Americans are said to have some level of hearing loss), this device, unlike a lot of other modern tech gadgets, serves a clear and practical purpose.

I spoke briefly with a member of Meta’s research team who said the glasses had been in development for some five years, and he pointed out a price difference that could make them appealing: whereas a lot of hearing aids can run as high as $1,600, the glasses will sell for $150.

The experience of wearing these glasses was interesting. Meta had me put earplugs in before trying them on to simulate the hearing loss that the glasses are meant to help users overcome. Once the glasses were on, they seemed to amplify the voice of the person I was talking to. Users can switch the amplification from focused, which zeroes in on the person in front of them, to omnidirectional, which picks up sound from all around them, depending on how they want to experience their surroundings.

Mark Zuckerberg has made it clear that he believes smart glasses are the future, and it’s evident that his company is doing its best to fulfill that mandate. But smart glasses remain a niche that has yet to truly find its footing. What was most obvious at Connect is that Meta has — in an attempt to succeed where others have failed — cast a very wide net, trying to make its glasses stylish, functional, and, most of all, useful.

Is this the future? Unsurprisingly, everyone at Connect seemed to think so. I suppose we’ll have to see if the rest of the world follows suit.

Crusoe, a Denver-based AI data center startup that recently raised $3.9 billion, has ended plans to use a new line of stationary power plants developed by fellow Denver company Boom Supersonic.

Founded in 2018 as a bitcoin miner that ran on excess natural gas from oil fields, Crusoe has since become one of the biggest builders of AI data centers, including a massive campus in Abilene, Texas, that supplies computing power to OpenAI.

Boom Supersonic, which is developing a supersonic passenger jet called Overture, launched a new business last year to sell a version of the engine it’s developing for that jet as natural gas-fired stationary power plants. Its Superpower turbine shares about 80% of the same parts with that airborne engine, called Symphony.

Crusoe had signed on to be the first customer for this business, agreeing to spend $1.25 billion on 29 of Boom’s 42-megawatt Superpower turbines. The first deliveries were supposed to begin in 2027. But that deal has since fallen apart, according to Boom Supersonic CEO Blake Scholl.

Friday, in a post on X, after congratulating Crusoe founders Cully Cavness and Chase Lochmiller on the company’s recent raise, Scholl said the companies are no longer moving forward with the turbine launch partnership. Although he did note that other customers were in its pipeline.

“The TL/DR is that turbines are no longer part of Crusoe’s near term primary power mix at Abilene/etc., so a launch partnership just didn’t make sense,” he wrote in the post. “Boom will be delivering about 250MW of Superpowers next year to other sites, and we’re targeting 1GW in 2028. We’re grateful for the help Crusoe gave us in shaping Superpower and continue cheering for their successes. The future is long, and we look forward to potentially teaming up if/when turbines become part of their primary power mix.”

Crusoe confirmed to TechCrunch that it is no longer doing business with Boom.

“We build AI factories from the power up, and we’re bringing new campuses online across the country, powered by innovative energy sources,” spokesperson Andrew Schmitt said in an email. “As our portfolio grows, we stay flexible, choosing the energy solutions that are right for each site as its needs evolve – including turbines, along with wind, solar, batteries and the grid. While Boom has been a great partner, the partnership isn’t the right fit today. We wish them well.”

Losing its launch customer is seemingly a setback for Boom, which raised $300 million last year, largely to commercialize the new business. The idea, Scholl told TechCrunch at the time, was to use profits from the stationary power plant business to fund the development of Overture.

Scholl could not be reached for comment before publication; TechCrunch will update this article if he responds.