Look What Has Thought Leaders Including Alexis Ohanian and Will.I.Am Drooling

Google Glass and Oculus Rift competitor Meta has a star-studded list of tech elites and celebrities singing the praises of its new product.

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By Catherine Clifford

Meta

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

"This was the first time I've ever put something on and felt that I was living in that future that I had been promised for all these years," says Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of the ultra-popular news website reddit.

Black Eyed Peas's Will.i.am says that this forthcoming product will change the way creative people tell stories.

And tech elite and futurist Robert Scoble said that the demo of this new product made him emotional. "I have never seen a product like this since the Macintosh," he says. Scoble doubled down on his claim in a video posted on his Facebook page to say that it's actually the most important development since the Apple 2.

So what is this life-changing product that has received such impassioned reviews?

Related: Will You Be Ready for the Virtual Reality Future?

It's a set of augmented reality glasses made by Google Glass and Oculus Rift competitor Meta. The product is set to come out in about three weeks. In case you are so inclined, there is a countdown clock on the company's homepage.

Before the public release, however, Meta released a YouTube video (embedded below) with the reactions to the demo from the following list of tech thought leaders: Scoble, will.i.am, Ohanian, Kevin Kelly (Wired), Eric Migicovsky (Pebble), Shel Israel, Andrew Laffoon (Mixbook), Heather Shaw, Andrej Kulikov (Audi) and Travis Giggy (Skuchain).

Details about the new product are scarce (unsurprisingly, that's part of drumming up anticipation, no?), but the Meta glasses cost $667. The MetaPro will cost almost $3,000.

Related: Beyond Gaming: Oculus Rift Founder's Predictions for Virtual Reality's Future

Meta has raised money from some of the biggest names in tech investing, including Ohanian and legendary investor Tim Draper, according to fundraising ledger Crunchbase.

Related: Will Tomorrow's Entrepreneurs Learn With Virtual Reality?

Catherine Clifford

Senior Entrepreneurship Writer at CNBC

Catherine Clifford is senior entrepreneurship writer at CNBC. She was formerly a senior writer at Entrepreneur.com, the small business reporter at CNNMoney and an assistant in the New York bureau for CNN. Clifford attended Columbia University where she earned a bachelor's degree. She lives in Brooklyn, N.Y. You can follow her on Twitter at @CatClifford.

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