Evan Spiegel
Key Views & Dialogues
What comes after smartphones, with Evan Spiegel of Snap
Snap enters 2026 near 1 billion monthly active users and net-income profitability, with consumer Specs launching after 12 years of investment to pair normal-glasses wearability with spatial-computer capabilities. With over two-thirds of new code AI-written, 25 million Snapchat+ subscribers, and direct revenue above $1 billion, cheaper software may increase the value of Snap’s distribution and proprietary hardware.
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Snap is entering 2026 at what Evan Spiegel calls a “crucible moment”: nearly 1 billion monthly active users, approaching net-income profitability, and consumer Specs launching later this year after 12 years of investment. The company is simultaneously funding hardware and transforming its software operation with AI.
Specs aim to occupy the empty space between camera-equipped “AirPods” and pass-through VR: normal-glasses wearability with the capabilities of a spatial computer. Spiegel expects portable televisions and work displays to migrate first, but the larger bet is on new shared experiences—laser tag, backyard dinosaurs, collaborative design—that “bring computing into the world.”
Snap’s hardware moat is its ownership of the full stack, from Lens Studio and Lens Core to a Linux-based operating system, waveguides, projectors, and IP-sensitive components manufactured in-house in the US and UK. Spiegel says Android is “way too bloated” for glasses and argues that hardware patents are much easier to defend than software innovations in the AI era.
AI is changing software development and the platform thesis: more than two-thirds of new code at Snap is now written by AI. Lens Studio is becoming more agentic, while bespoke applications can be created rapidly enough that Spiegel calls the traditional “killer app” a mirage; cheap software creation may also weaken the App Store’s million- or two-million-app lock-in.
The core business combines immense engagement with a fast-growing second revenue leg: more than 1 trillion selfies in a year, 25 million Snapchat+ subscribers, and direct revenue running above $1 billion. Advertising remains the other major stream, including Promoted Places and closed-loop measurement, while Lens+ monetizes computationally expensive AI creation and editing.
Snap’s defining product claim is that messaging has different network economics from public social media: one to three close friends can deliver most of the value, while incremental public connections may reduce willingness to share. Its answer was to “separate social from media,” keeping private relationships distinct from moderated Discover content rather than stuffing a friend graph to generate feed inventory.
Spiegel rejects blanket youth-technology policy, arguing for developmentally appropriate parental controls at the operating-system level and insisting that young people must learn AI tools. On safety, John Collison presses that “the algorithm is the content” for each user; Spiegel’s answer is that dangerous material should be stopped through clear content rules at the content level.
As AI makes software production cheaper, Snap sees distribution, product judgment, and proprietary hardware becoming more valuable. A service that once required 15 people can now be built with “half a person’s time” and distributed through Snapchat, while designers increasingly submit working code and Spiegel reviews hundreds of ideas weekly under a North Star of “durable value.”
Evan Spiegel, Snapchat: Building a Multi-Billion Dollar Company
Snap says it will launch its first consumer AR glasses “later this year,” making a 12-year program Spiegel says no VC would ever support a crucible moment funded by a nearly $7B-revenue business. AI may ease Snap’s resource asymmetry, while Snapchat+ has reached 25M subscribers and a $1B run rate growing 60% year-over-year; re-accelerating advertising through scalable SMB lower-funnel products remains the key swing factor.
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- Snap says it will launch its first consumer version of its AR glasses “later this year,” the payoff of a 12-year glasses program that Spiegel says “no VC would ever in a million years support.” He frames the launch as a “crucible moment” and “seminal year”: Snapchat — almost a $7B revenue business, near Fortune 500 scale — is explicitly the cash-flowing vehicle funding the attempt to “reinvent the computer,” and there was never a world where Snap stayed software-only (“we started investing in hardware in 2014”).
- AI is “probably the best thing that’s ever happened to Snapchat,” because it could ease the resource asymmetry of 15 years of “trench warfare with monopolies.” Snap has “lots of new ideas, but very limited resources” against rivals with “no new ideas but infinite resources”; now “we could basically have an infinite number of engineering resources.” Since the beginning of this year the job of a Snap software engineer is “profoundly and forever changed,” and the business was pre-positioned for a world where “almost instantly, you can copy nearly any piece of software” — network effects, the AR platform, and the content ecosystem are the hard-to-copy advantages.
- Snapchat+ has reached 25M subscribers and a $1B run rate growing 60% year-over-year, roughly two or three years after launch. At $4/month it’s ESPN-scale in subscribers, with Lens+ tiering on top of what Spiegel calls “probably the most used gen AI camera service”; Spiegel says, “I really love the subscription business. I wish we had done it earlier.”
- The advertising business is being inverted from big-brand upper-funnel to SMB lower-funnel — the stated swing factor for re-acceleration. Snap’s mix was “the inverse of a Google or a Meta” (hundreds of large US brand customers, immature lower funnel); the multi-year rebuild toward scalable, performance-optimized SMB demand is why Spiegel concedes “we do need to re-accelerate the advertising business” but sees “a path to a lot more revenue.”
- His Meta Ray-Ban critique is a margin argument: “they took the most iconic, crazy high margin product and they destroyed the margin, and then they associated it with Meta.” Meta “needed to camouflage their brand”; volume at Ray-Ban prices moves units but may not build a durable business. Snap runs the Tesla-Roadster/early-iPhone playbook instead — premium positioning with enthusiasts, high gross margins reinvested in R&D — plus vertical integration where it differentiates: its own waveguide, its own micro-projector, and core components manufactured in its own US and UK facilities.
- Scale check: almost a billion global users and about half a billion daily — one of “maybe seven to ten” services that size, depending on whether China is included — yet Spiegel calls Snap the “middle child.” Bigger than Reddit or Pinterest, smaller than the giants, and mid-transformation on three fronts at once: glasses, ads, and direct revenue.
- He turned down multi-billion-dollar offers in his early 20s because every core choice was the opposite of consensus — and cites independent studies supporting the worldview. Ephemeral private messaging vs permanent feeds, AR while everyone bet on VR (“thinking that people were actually going to wear a TV on their face. It was insane”), privacy in 2012-13; Spiegel says studies show Snapchat improves friendships and well-being while “Instagram, TikTok, whatever, make people feel bad.” Early investors let Evan and Bobby each sell $10M of stock, making money less relevant: “$10 million is more than enough money to live a really great, comfortable life.”