Meta’s New AR Glasses, Docusign & CLEAR Partnership, Rent the Runway’s Future | Sep 18, 2025

0:13Welcome, everyone, to the Informations TI TV. My name is Akash Basricha. It is Thursday, September 18th. We have got another full tour of the tech sector planned for you today, folks. We are recapping everything from last night's Meta Connect event. It was quite the doozy, and we're going to break it all down for you here today. We're also going to give you some inside analysis on what we know and what we don't know about the TikTok deal that is still working its way through negotiations. We've then got the CEOs of DocuSign and Clear coming on for an exclusive interview and some news that they're going to break here on the show today.

0:48And we're going to close out with a very special conversation with the CEO of Rent the Runway. We've got a lot to get to, so let's get right on into it. Meta put on one of the biggest wearables events yet last night, unveiling a new Meta Ray-Ban display for about$800. It basically is a smart glasses with a small display on it on the inside. These are normal glasses. but I haven't tried the one. We've got somebody coming on the show who has. Just to give you more context here, the company also unveiled new Ray-Bans without the screens and also new sporty Oakley glasses, which they don't have the screen.

1:24They have other smart features like the speakers and the cameras. I want to bring on Ben Beharin, who is the CEO of Creative Strategies. He's an expert in all things displays, and he was at the event last night. Ben, it's great to have you. Welcome to TITV. Yeah, good to be here. Thanks for having me. Okay, so give us your high-level reflections. What did you think of the event last night? Yeah, I mean, I think the main event really was the rumor that became true of Meta Ray-Bans with display. I mean, I think Meta's been very, very public about their desire to be an augmented reality type of a play in terms of glasses.

1:59I even did the Orion demo last year, which is something that a lot of people in tech circles did, which was kind of their vision of the best expression, if you will, of augmented reality in glasses. What you get with this new product, MetaRay Bands with Display, is kind of a slimmed-down version of that. Still a very high-color, high-resolution display that you can use with gestures, like Mark's showing there with the neural band, which is really, to be honest with you, a crazy experience that this thing basically knows the intent of your click, right? And it can differentiate between a finger click, a finger swipe, you know, et cetera.

2:36So it was really - Did you get a chance to try them? I did, yeah. Yeah, so walked around kind of a demo room that they had. I took some pictures. I put it on Twitter as best I could. The display from my view, which is just kind of in the lower right, you've got calls there. You can do messaging. Yeah. Two parts of that demo. How did you find, like, tell me about how you found, I mean, were you, we saw the demo, the demo had some hiccups, but when you used it, you know, were you experiencing similar hiccups or did it work okay? No, it worked fine. I mean, every demo we had worked well. Well, there was two that kind of really set it for me because these are the differences from Meta Ray-Ban without a display.

3:12Like you can listen to music right on those products. You can talk to Meta AI. It can see what you know. But the live translation one was probably the most interesting. Like I've never seen anything quite like that where you were talking to a person and as they're talking, the captions come up on the screen. So, you know, whatever language it supports, You could imagine that. And then the other one was just using the glasses and their demo was, you know, take a picture of, take an art photo and say, what kind of style, like, tell me more about this art. And instead of just telling it to you, it brought up a picture and gave you more visual information on that design, which I thought was actually pretty cool.

3:50So things like that, right? Right. So one of the things I want to have a little bit of a conversation with you about sort of the strategy behind this product and then also the market for these wearables at large. And so if we think about the strategy, one thing that we've been trying to figure out is sort of what the business model is for a device like this. And, you know, they price it at$799. It's, you know, it is what it is. The broader question, though, is do you see them making money from the device itself? Do you see advertisements coming into play in a couple years? Do you see sort of a subscription offering being the main way to make money?

4:30How do you think about that? Yeah, I mean, I think primarily there's going to need to be a way to make money from hardware. I don't think they're making money on this hardware. I mean, just the component costs and things alone, I would imagine that this is a bit of a loss leader, but also a loss leader that you need to do just to seed the market, right? With a kind of first generation display. I think they have every intention to make money on this hardware someday. You know, I think that they have ambitions to be very similar to Apple, if you will, but maybe not at the same price points. I think Mark's always been very clear.

4:59We want to make, you know, these things affordable. but you know they can't lose money i think the advertisement comes into that as some form of a subsidy on those margins but i do think they also want to make money on hardware so i think that's the long game ecosystem plays some advertising but still get some margins on hardware but doesn't need to be apple-like margin and how could you see this ecosystem play playing out with respect to how they make money so the big one being you know there's an app part of this that gets interesting they're going to want to have apps that come a part of it right so again think about the app store for iPhone or mobile, right, for augmented reality and virtual reality.

5:36I think that's, you know, a play that they want. And again, like you said, pass through for subscription revenues. Maybe these are all things that you're doing more with in terms of multimedia, other apps and services that you might subscribe to as a part of the meta ecosystem. So that's obviously WhatsApp and Facebook and Messenger and a host of other things that they do. So I would, But again, look at it as an ecosystem whole, very similar to the way that you'd analyze Apple as an entire ecosystem with all the parts of hardware, software, services, things on top of that coming into play in a multiple device experience, right?

6:08Not just these, the Horizon headset, other things they'll do. It's all part of a broader hardware strategy. Right. You know, I want to ask you, when you were using the devices, one of the questions I have around these AI tools is if the AI is good enough to justify putting it in the hardware, because, I mean, there's two challenges here. One is getting the hardware to work, and then one is getting the AI to work. And, I mean, my question for you is, do you think the AI is good enough? Because, I mean, look, there are still issues that come up with it, right? I mean, even Apple's devices, you know, we've talked a lot about how good Siri is and how good it's not.

6:47Do you think the models are there yet that we should be putting them into hardware? Or is this kind of like a, hey, let's just get something out and be, you know, earlier than everyone else? Yeah, I mean, I think there's a couple parts to this question. One, there's is Meta's AI good enough, right? And I would say it's pretty good, but it's not as robust as something like Google's with Gemini, right? And if anybody's ever used Google Gemini with live video, where you can again, just show your camera to Gemini and expose anything that it's seeing and have a conversation about it that is probably easily the best experience i've ever had of a multimodal ai experience chat tpt with opening i had as a version of that too it's pretty good it's not as good as google's in my in my opinion and metas is probably a a distant third at that point but for things like what flower is this help me remember this information it'll work like it does those things that that the consumer expects um i think when you go off and try to have a more robust multimodal conversation about what you're doing.

7:45Like, for example, help me do this, right? The agents. The agents. Yeah, that might be harder. Again, they want to go there. And we're in the very early adoption cycles of this. But as you know, Google also has products like this that should be out in the next 12 months. I would expect Gemini will deliver quite a multimodal experience as well in glasses. So point being, this space is heating up. I think we're on the cusp of multimodal. And the next 12 months, I think, will really show whose models are the best and really what consumers want to do with these things, because that's what we don't know yet.

8:18So try it. Let's see what they do. You know, Meta's got the first real mass, you know, large scale attempt at AR glasses. So we'll see. I think the behavioral learnings of this is probably what I'm most interested in. And what are you expecting from the Google? I mean, you talked about Google. We were all watching the event as well when they did the demo. What are you expecting from that product? Do you expect that to be significantly better than this one when it does come out? When do you even think it will be out? Yeah, I mean, I think the target is next year, right? There's some collaborations with Samsung, obviously a couple of other glasses vendors like they've talked about.

8:52And so I think you'll see those come on. Again, right, style and variety matters, right? Nobody wants just one or two designs. So you've got to have a breadth and depth of style options, which you see with Meta and you'll see with Google. And Google, I think, will have similar to this roadmap, like we talked about, right? Non-AR glasses, so just camera and audio, and then ones with a display, just to, again, cover multiple price points, right? So I think that will be competitive. Again, it depends on what brands come to market, how well-received those are. They're not as far along as Meta, so it'll take them a little bit of time.

9:25But I think it'll be a good first showing in both those categories that we're talking about with the partners they have. Right. Last question for you. We've got Alex Himmel coming on the show. We're actually speaking to him tonight. We're going to run the interview tomorrow. What questions would you have for him if you were talking to him? Yeah, I mean, I think really doubling down on the positioning, right, in terms of what are these products really, what's their goal, right? What's their ambition? What do we envision consumers will do with these things? I think the use cases is really the most interesting part of this, right?

9:56We don't know what people will do, especially once they've given an augmented reality experience, right, in a device. So I think just what are the things we believe people will do? What are the primary use cases that people will attach to and find value? That's what I think everybody's after. Because if we can nail those, you know, we'll just call them killer use cases instead of killer apps, right? Whatever the killer use cases are, I think that helps sink that. Right. the market and more people start, you know, become more interested in this product. Right. Great. Well, Ben, thank you so much for coming on the show.

10:29We appreciate it. There are so many more, you know, we didn't even talk about, I actually, I did a quick chat GPT of all of the sort of augmented reality type glasses products that are out there. There are a lot of smarter, smaller companies working on products like this, and we didn't get time to go through all those, but maybe we'll have you on again and we can kind of go through the startup landscape here with respect to these wearables, because I kind of want to know what to make of some of these smaller companies that are coming out. But we'll have to have that conversation later on. That is Ben Bajaran, the CEO of Creative Strategies.

11:01Okay, well, the drama around TikTok's life in the U.S. could finally be heading towards a resolution this week after the U.S. and China made progress towards a framework of sorts that could settle both of their concerns. This is a long-running saga that really does not seem to be getting any less complicated. And so I want to bring on our Washington DC correspondent, Sylvia Varnamoregan, to talk about what we know and also what we don't know. In fact, she published a piece with basically that exact title this week on our website. Hi, Sylvia. How are you doing? Hey, Akash. I'm great. How are you?

11:35I am doing well, except I forgot to ask. I don't know if they do prescriptions yet. I was wondering if you can do it because I wear glasses and I don't know if the display thing comes with prescriptions. Anyway, you're a former - I think you can ask Alex Himmel. I know. Well, you're a former meta reporter too. So, I mean, this is all, you know, this all must be like watching, you know, watching your old elementary school, you know, really make the biggest news ever. Yeah, they're making some big moves. Okay, so let's talk about TikTok. So, you know, you wrote this story. I think the best way to sort of think about what we know and what we don't know is maybe the categories you address in the story, which is, you know, you talked about the investors, the forward, the product, the CEO, the geopolitics.

12:16let's start with the investors and the board what do we know about who's going to actually potentially own tiktok and who might have a board seat in the new university right so as part of this deal which has been a long time in the making um there will be a new entity established right that will own the u.s uh tiktok and this entity will be comprised of uh different investors so So existing investors in ByteDance will own 30 % roughly. New investors coming in will own about 50 % stake. And then ByteDance, which is TikTok's Chinese parent company, will have a stake of just under 20%. And that formula, that structure was broadly hashed out in April and has remained the same.

13:04But there are and could potentially be changes to this happening in real time because, you know, nothing's finalized at this point. But that's broadly what we know. And we've also reported that existing investors could increase their stake if they wish to. Okay. And what are some of the things that could be changing as we speak underneath our feet? Well, I think that there are a lot of remaining questions that we haven't answered, in particular around who the other investors are that are coming into this deal. We know certain names. We know that Oracle will be an investor. We know that Andreessen Horowitz is coming in, Silver Lake.

13:47There could be other investors that we haven't learned of at this time. And what about board seats? Right. So this is also a really interesting area, right? There will be a board, obviously, and the makeup of that board is something that we're kind of trying to figure out, to report out in real time. So we know that Oracle will have a seat on the board, that ByteDance will likely have a seat, but the remaining makeup of that board has not become clear yet. It's kind of, I mean, you know, we had Martin, our executive editor, co-executive, I should say, on the show last week to talk about the, just all the ways in which Oracle has inserted itself, you know, not just in the AI story, but also the media story now with David Ellison.

14:40And, you know, I kind of forgot, actually, that they're actually a major part of the TikTok story here. And with a board seat, I mean, gosh, I never really associated with social media. But, I mean, they're going to have a pretty big part. Yeah, well, it's a really interesting and unusual deal, remember. So there are a lot of different players in this. And there were a lot of different interested bidders. So Trump is due to have a call tomorrow with Chinese President Xi. Yeah. He has said publicly that he's going to confirm everything on this call. Okay. So we'll see if the deal is announced, if it's finalized.

15:20But I think it's still a very fluid situation. Do we know what time the call is by any chance? Great question, Akash. You got me there. It's fine. I don't know if anyone knows, really. it's probably in his schedule but i'm not sure okay so i i want to i want to talk about the the product now what we know about sort of what this what this tiktok u.s will end up looking like the big question is the algorithm and whether or not the u.s entity can license the algorithm sounds like there will be some sort of licensing agreement that that will take shape Yes, so China has announced that as part of this deal, as it's imagined, ByteDance will license its algorithm technology to this new entity, which will essentially recreate this algorithm for the new product, which will be TikTok US.

16:15And we reported in July that TikTok has been working on a new version of the app for U.S. users specifically, which makes sense if you think about it because it's going to be a new company with a new product just for U.S. users. And we reported at the time that this was internally codenamed M2, but I believe the app itself will be TikTok U.S. And the plan is to push that so that users have to move over to that app if they're in the U.S. Right. It's been held up a little. So it was initially due to launch on September 5th, as we reported, but the company didn't stick to that timeline. And so it's unclear when that will be launched, but it is part of this still, and that will occur sometime in the future.

17:01Right. And this kind of brings me to, you know, sort of the part of the story, which is a big question mark right now. And I want to get your sort of thoughts on this is, I mean, we don't really know what concessions the U.S. has made to sort of get that, get access to that algorithm, right? I mean, this is kind of a big question mark right now. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's a huge question. As I said, this deal was broadly figured out back in April, but it was held up and delayed over many months because of these trade talks. And so, you know, we were all scratching our head wondering, when is this whole saga going to come to a resolution?

17:45And I think that it's clear that there are things that are moving now, and both China and the U.S. have said that a framework has been agreed to. But what hasn't been disclosed is what the U.S. agreed to, to get this deal over the line. Right. Right. Last question for you, Sylvia. I mean, so it sounds like we're nearing a deal. Tomorrow's going to be a big day. We're going to see how it finally all shakes out after like, what, four different delays. Do you think this app is going to be as good in the end as the original TikTok? Like, what's your pulse on this? Well, I'm sure that the people involved in this are very anxious about that because, of course, TikTok has a very big, very loyal following of users.

18:30And so they are not going to want to alienate them or disrupt the business in any way. So I'm sure that's why the algorithm was so critical to this, because that's sort of TikTok's special source, and they're going to want for this new U.S. app to be a similar user experience, I'm sure, something that users don't even really notice the difference with. and so i think the question of whether it'll be as good kind of remains to be seen but i'm sure that a lot of energy is going into um trying to ensure that it is because they would not want this to be more disruptive than it's already been with the potential ban and the four executive orders delaying the law and all this other commotion yeah great well sylvia uh once we do have the final details of the deal we'll bring you back on to discuss what to make of it and and whether or not there was anything surprising about it.

19:23Thank you so much for coming on. That is Sylvia Barnum-Oregan, who covers everything Washington, D.C., and technology for the information. Okay. It is always a treat when companies come on our show to break news themselves. And today, we are bringing on the CEOs of DocuSign and Clear, the identity verification company, to talk about some news that they have today. Alan Thigerson is the CEO of DocuSign, and Karen Seidman-Becker is the CEO at Clear. It is their first time on the show. Welcome to the both of you. It's great to have you. Thank you for having us. Okay, so Karen, I'm going to give the floor to you.

19:57What are we announcing today? Today we are announcing essentially that you can sign documents with your face, which makes a ton of sense. I think in the modern world that we live in, pushing enter just isn't enough. And so our partnership with DocuSign brings total identity integrity to life. And in a digitally connected world, ClearOne strengthens trust and security. It streamlines workflows and it sets a new standard for secure identity with high stake digital workflows. So we're excited. And so, Alan, this is a new product that is being rolled out across all DocuSign documents. Like, I mean, how can we expect this to take shape?

20:41Yes, it'll be an option for anybody who's sending documents to be signed in the U.S., where Clear operates. And DocuSign is used for so many different kinds of agreements. I think we'll see this with agreements where there's a little bit more sensitivity. So this could be everything from when a company is hiring somebody, a medical service provider like a doctor or a hospital, a bank or financial services provider is trying to sign somebody up for a banking or insurance product. Any of those situations, there's a little bit more risk involved. Orgically, there's been a very tough tradeoff between risk and convenience.

21:21You know, you can do a lot more identity verification, but then you're inconvenienced in customers and you may lose some of them in that process. What's amazing with the clear integration is it's so easy, as Sker just said, you can just take a selfie and you've identified yourself because of the pre-registered profiles that they have. And so it's, I think, a very, very convenient solution. And we think not only will this be useful for people who are already doing more advanced identity verification, but it will allow companies to use advanced identity verification in many more use cases. Right.

21:56Today, that trade doesn't quite make sense. Aaron Powell, how does this deal work with respect to your partnership? I mean, like who's paying who here in terms of like this deal taking shape? So this is an enterprise deal. And so DocuSign pays clear. It's incorporated in the DocuSign solution to their customers. And I think we have two sides to the business, right? So you're thinking about the travel side, which is a consumer subscription based business. Our clear one business is an enterprise secure identity platform. And what you're seeing today across enterprises, whether it be in healthcare, as Alan talked about, or on the workforce side or in the digital workflows, is that the cost of getting it wrong is massive.

22:4380 % of breaches start with compromised credentials. And so quite frankly, for a long time on the enterprise side, we were a solution looking for a problem. The world has now recognized in enterprise that they need to secure identity. It's foundational across so many different parts of their business for both their workforce as well as their customers. So Alan, you are Karen's newest customer, it looks like. You're paying clear. Okay. How much you paying her? Ah, Candice Wilson. Not enough. Not enough. A fair amount. Well, I'll tell you what. I mean, look, we've got the two of you here. Karen, you know, Karen, if you want to renegotiate the deal right now, we can do that live on air.

23:26I don't want to renegotiate it because I'm really excited about this partnership. But what I will say is that we do want to raise awareness for customers. And I think that is the important point. And to what Alan said, people thought there was a tradeoff of safer or easier for a long time. And nobody wants to bring more friction to their customers. And today, the need for securing transactions, for securing identity, insurance, financial services, health care. By 2028, one out of four job applicants will be fake. And so I think raising awareness and driving utilization is really what we want to do together.

24:04So do you see a world where clear, because this is actually something we talked about on the show, the recruiting process being you've got all these, oh, am I hearing an echo there? Are you guys getting an echo for you? Oh, I think we're back. We're good. Okay, we're doing a live now. We're doing a echo for 10 seconds there. That's all right. That's the beauty of being live. We're back. So what was my question? Oh, so we were talking about recruiting and we talked about AI generated resumes and we've talked about AI, you know, AI agents being the one to scan through resumes. So, Karen, do you see a future where like clear?

24:42I mean, you have to like authenticate yourself to apply for any of these jobs. I actually think that would be a pretty good idea. So the answer is yes, and we're already doing some of it. We see workforce and the workforce journey as a large and necessary solution, if you will. So we're partnered with Greenhouse. So when you're applying for the job to ensure not only that you're alive, human, that you are you and then connecting you to your credentials, right? That's going to be a really important part. We're partnered with DocuSign, which is also part of the interview or job acceptance process.

25:14with Okta for enterprise authentication. And so this journey through the workforce, think about how analog it still is. And now in the world of AI and deep fakes, to your point, it's easier than ever. And then there's a hybrid work environment. I don't even see you walk into the office for a job interview. So lots of people have said beyond North Koreans infiltrating our workforce, like I interviewed somebody, they passed the tech test, somebody very different showed up on day one. You've got to connect all those things together. That's identity. Yeah, we've had that issue as well. I mean, we've long been used for a variety of employment-related use cases, particularly in the hiring process, whether it's employees or contractors.

25:56And different companies apply different standards for different stages in that process. And so, we've had a range of identity verification solutions for a while. Many of you probably We have tried knowledge-based authentication for sort of the legacy technology. You can do video verification as well. But what's so interesting about the clear integration, you get a very high level of security with a very high level of convenience. That's like the perfect trade, right? There's a very high level of security if you're forced to go into the bank branch or you meet with an employee, but that's really not very convenient.