This week our guest is Deniz Özgür, co-founder, co-CEO, Spacerunners. Space Runners is a fashion-tech platform that operates at the intersection of digital fashion, blockchain technology, and the metaverse. Deniz was named a Forbes 30 under 30 CEO last year. Spacerunners uses AI to help brands bring their products to new markets, like the Metaverse…

This week our guest is Joaquin Cuenca Abela, co-founder and CEO of Freepik. Rony is off for the Jewish holiday, Sukkot. Earlier in the week, he launched his new company SynthBee with $20 million dollars of VC money. Also in the news, Nvidia enters software with a high-performing open source AI model, competing with its biggest customers. Our sponso…

This week the hosts are here in full force to welcome Justin Maier, co-founder and CEO of Civitai. Elon Musk of Tesla revealed of the Robotaxi and its accompanying Robobus and Optimus robots. The nobel prize in Physics went to John Hopfield and Geoff Hinton, the AI Scientist who "retired from Google" warning the NY Times about the dangers of AGI. R…

Ted and Charlie welcome Antony Batt, Neville Spiteri, co-founders of Wevr, creators of "The Blu," one of the first experiences created for the HTC Vive in 2016. Rony is off for the holiday (Happy New Year to those who celebrate). In the news, Future Trash, an LA creative studio, scores $5M to make experiences for Fortnite. Runware AI Raises $3M for…

Charlie, Rony and Ted welcome Yonatan Tal, CEO of Supersocial. First up is the flurry of announcements from Meta Connect, including the unveiling of their see-through AR headset, dubbed Orion, and more broad updates about AI. Rony shares intimate details of his conversation with Mark Zuckerberg at the prestigious Allen & Company invitation-only in …

Ted and Charlie are Rony-less but happily dive into a busy newsweek, which featured new headsets from Snap and HTC, a $230 M raise for World Labs, which is focused on generating 3D AI, for worlds and assets. Also in the news Palmer Lucky to the rescue, and a Neuralink breakthrough. John Attanassio and Luisa Huang, co-founders of Toonstar, join us t…

This week all three hosts are back in force with a great guest, Zhen Feng, Head of International for Roblox. Rony and Ted talk about a new hush-hush optics technology for XR which they believe is coming to headsets soon. It's a slow news week, but we did talk about iOs 18, Apple Intelligence (or lack thereof), and Google Shopping's virtual try-on. …

This week it's Ted's turn to be too busy, but Charlie and Rony are in fine form, welcoming Liam Broza, CTO of Infinite Reality. In the news, funding for AI startups big and small, including Magic AI, Story Protocol, Miris, and Gen-AI animation app, Viggle. Liam explains how Infinite Reality is turning the browser into a metaverse streaming platform…

This week we're joined by Ryan Chapman, CEO of Motive, focused on business applications of VR. We start with the state of the entertainment business, where Charlie throws around wildly inaccurate numbers to make the point that the music has stopped for the television networks and cable channels like MTV, which are about to be chopped up and sold fo…

This week the three hosts are here in full force as Rony returns from vacation. Now that a federal judge ruled that Google is a monopolist, the question is what to do about it. Forbidding them from buying distribution is one thing, but now people are talking about forcing them to spin off their browser business. Speaking of Google, they've released…

Google's guilty of monopoly practices, but the result will be unclear for some time. Elon Musk continues to go bonkers while raking in trillions, nonetheless, he is suing people who don't like him, like former advertisers and others unhappy with the lack of moderation on their platform. Meta shuttered Echo Arena, and now they're shuttering the stud…

This week our guest is Kerestell Smith, creator of Gorilla Tag VR and founder of Another Axiom. Rony is on a farm with no Internet. In the news Canva surprises no one with its acquisition of Gen-AI startup Leonardo.ai. Congrats to Hedra AI text-to-voice, which produces lip-synced short video; they raised $10M. Meta reported earnings Weds. Revenue i…

This week our guest is neuroscientist Dr. Cody Rall. Rony's working his super-secret day job (an AI startup). Top of the news is OpenAI's Search GPT, which is now a close beta (you can sign up); AI start-up Cohere valued at $5.5 B in their latest round. There are more than 20 AI unicorns - startups valued at more than $1B. Elon Musk has a supercomp…

Charlie and Rony go Tedless this week with Sarah Nagy, founder and CEO of Seek AI, which brings AI to datasets that can be queried with natural language processing and other AI applications. This week's news includes funding for 3D company Jigspace, whose demos are bundled with Apple Vision Pro and tablets. Artificial Agency raised $16M for AI NPCs…

Another big news week finds AMD snapping up Silo AI for $655M. Captions lip dub co raises $60M. Odyssey AI out of stealth with hi-res gen-AI. Infinite Reality Raises $350M, Acquires LandVault in stock deal. Apple is launching the Iphone 16 with AI this fall, but Siri won't be out until Spring 2025. Samsung includes Bixby in its new launch. Our gues…

This week the news was all about AI, music labels sue AI music generators Suno and Udio. Etched raises $120M to make AI Chips. Emergence AI scores $97.2M to make AI agents for white-collar work. We share our hot takes on Augmented World Expo, which wrapped last week. Tony, a true XR OG and an old friend, joined Rony in the AWE Hall of Fame last wee…

This 200th episode of "This Week in XR" is recorded with a live audience on AWE's Expo Stage on June 20, 2024. This is the 15th edition of the largest XR conference and expo in the world. We invited five guests who have never been on our show, AWE Program director Sonya Haskins, developer and blogger, Tony Vitillo, Cosmo Scharf, founder of VRLA, an…

This week is show #199. Our guest is Jeri Ellsworth, CEO and Co-Founder of Tilt Five. Next week we'll record show #200 in front of a live audience at AWE in Long Beach, CA. This week we review Apple AI (Apple Intelligence), their cross-platform AI implementation. Also in the news, Mistral raises $600 M to compete with OpenAI, Google, Meta, and Anth…

Ted and Charlie welcome Ori Inbar, who is celebrating AWE's 15th anniversary by moving the June 18 - 20 show from Silicon Valley to Long Beach. In the news, big raises for Pika Labs ($80M) and Twelve Labs ($50M) that can understand video. Wevr, maker of the seminal VR experience The Blu, raises $3.5M. The CEO of Sony Pictures says he is "all in" on…

Our guest is XR consultant and thought leader, Amy Peck, CEO of EndeavorXR, but first, it's Ted's birthday, and yes, we sing (sorry). After a brief celebration, we talked about Elon's monumental $6B raise for xAI, and Google's new partnership with Magic Leap, renewing a love affair that began in 2014, when Google made a whopping $500M bet on the na…

This week our guest is Jon Vlassopulos, CEO of Napster, which is now a streaming platform with 170 M + tracks. In the news Scarjo v. OpenAI, data-tagging Scale AI snared another Billion dollar round, Series F, at a 13B valuation. Suno, the text-to-music generator, raised $125 M. A dying man is trying to clone himself in AI. Jon brings a wealth of e…

This week Ted and Charlie celebrate episode 195 without Rony. Our guest is Matthew Celia, of Lightsail VR, who produced Eli Roth's "Faceless Lady," which is now on Meta Quest TV for those with VR headsets. It's the first stereoscopic piece of it's six-episode series. In the news, Google IO drops its Sora competitor, Veo, and using Google Maps to "p…

Charlie and Rony give the show a go without Ted, who's traveling. Very busy news week with lots of M&A activity. We talked about CoStar Group's $1.6B acquisition of 3D scanner Matterport, Lamini AI's $25M raise for secure Enterprise AI, Neurable also raised money, Gen AI company Freepik acquired hit AI upscaler Magninfic, which is also a Spanish co…

This week the hosts discuss the new lawsuits against OpenAI. After six months of hype, sentiment about the Humane AI Pin, and The Apple Vision Pro, has become increasingly negative. This week, the press went after the darling of CES 2024, the Rabbit R1, with reviews that called it "unreviewable." This week our guests are Jennifer Tuft and Cassandra…

We rescheduled Friday morning's recording for Monday night in order to bring you one of our most impressive guests ever, Yat Siu, Chairman of Animoca Brands, which has investments in Sandbox, Cool Cats, Yuga Labs, nearly two hundred other Metaverse, web3 and blockchain based companies. We do hit the news briefly before bringing in our guest. This w…

The hosts are all over Meta's release of the new MetaAI with Llama 3, now integrated across all of Meta's brands, and totally free, bringing an exceptional multimodal (does images with short animation) to nearly 4 B users. That's half the planet. Adobe is upgrading its Premiere editing suite, adding Sora for B roll, in-painting (for removing or add…

Another episode packed with AI news, in particular an investigative NY Times piece revealing the big tech companies were aware of the copyright issues around vacuuming up the Internet. We also talked about two AI-based startups, Udio, which raised $10M for AI created music, and Spines, which raised $6M for e-book publishing. Our guest is Connell Ga…

This Week the hosts are talking about OpenAI's Voice Engine, which can be trained on fifteen second recording, creating profound questions about privacy and security. The guest this week is Maureen Fan, co-founder and CEO of Baobab Studios, which for eight years has been creating original content for VR, the Metaverse, and traditional media. The co…

The hosts are joined by Liz Hyman, President and Chief Executive Officer of the XR Association (XRA), the trade association promoting the dynamic growth of the XR industry. First up in the news, Amazon doubles down on Anthropic AI as it adds $2.75B to its previous $1.25B investment. OpenAI's text-to-video generator Sora goes to Hollywood, but what …

This Week in XR "Dear Tim" episode, an SXSW (South by Southwest) feature session was recorded live in Austin 3/12/24, featuring guest Joanna Popper, former CAA, NBC and HP executive. With the launch of the Meta Quest 3 in November, and the Apple Vision Pro in early February, we now have two competing approaches on spatial computing. The comparison …

Ted and Charlie welcome guest Weili Dai, co-founder Marvell Technologies, Silicon Box, and MeetKai. In the news, Saudi Arabia to invest $40B in AI, Nvidia revealed its new Blackwell AI computer at its GTC Conference, which it calls "AI Woodstock." They also showed off AI for robots. The State of Unreal was the main event at the Game Developers Conf…

Charlie and Ted, having recovered from SXSW, are back in their respective man caves, while Rony is on cell, driving through Alabama. Our SXSW panel talk will be posted in three weeks but can be found right now on the SXSW site. After a brief overview of three AI funding stories, we turned our attention back to SXSW, but other topics intruded: the p…

Charlie is solo at SXSW while Ted and Rony are in transit. We'll be posting our Tuesday panel on the future of XR in the age of Apple Vision Pro at the end of next week. Not a big news week. The Sora freakout continues as they drop more tests on the socials. In AI, Haiper emerges from stealth with $13.5 M to take on Runway. Jabali raised $5M to use…

Charlie and Ted are without Rony, who is driving across the country. We'll convene at SXSW in Austin to do our show live on stage with Joanna Popper in a session titled "XR in the Age of Vision Pro" on March 12th. In the news, $675M for Figure AI's humanoid robots, powered by ChatGPT, and a new text-to-video tool, Ideogram. Our guests this week are…

The hosts are in fine form as they dissect the AI boom, which will have an internet-like impact on the economy, society, and culture as the Internet, and will happen much, much faster. Nvidia's explosive earnings are a bigger news story than the US returning to the moon. That's how big it is. To discuss the complications and opportunity AI represen…

This week our guest is Susanne Haspinger, COO of Hololight. Rony's at an AI Medical conference. The big news is OpenAI's reveal of expanded memory for ChatGPT and the tease of the next Dall-E upgrade, a text-to-video app called Sora, which is capable of generating up to a minute of video from a single prompt. Nvidia, now the world's third largest c…

We recorded one of our best shows this morning with Cinematic AI Filmmakers Caleb & Shelby Ward. If you have not seen their hilarious Wes Anderson Star Wars trailer you are missing a treat. Meanwhile, the week rewarded us with some big news: Disney puts up $15B for Epic to make their game and entertainment universe, Ted is in love - with his new Ap…

This week the hosts are together, live and in-person *for the first time* from the glamorous Sunset Marquis in Los Angeles. It's a propitious day on top of that, of course, as today is 2-2-24, the official launch day of the Apple Vision Pro. In addition, Meta reported a record quarter, a record dividend, a stock buyback, and a successful Christmas …

Ted is doing his real job for Viacom today but Rony is with us, while on a ferry in Florida, en route to a secret rendezvous. In the news: Eleven Labs raising $80M for voice cloning, $6.7M for Artisse AI photo app for models and influencers, and the new Rabbit R1 a compact, toy-like $200 handheld AI "Large Action Model" that knows you and your apps…

Jason McDowall of the AR Show podcast sits in the co-host chair as Ted and Rony are traveling. They missed a great show. With Rony absent we take a deep dive into troubles at Magic Leap and how its recent raise of $590M of debt financing from its majority shareholder, Saudi Arabia, is actually bad news. If they didn't get there with the last infusi…

Live from CES, Charlie and Ted recap the show, the Sphere experience, Xreal's newest AR glasses, the new Sony enterprise XR pass-through HMD, healthtech and, outside the show, layoffs at Unity and Google's AR hardware team. Our guest is the original futurist, author Faith Popcorn, who was at CES on behalf of holographic telepresence company, Proto.…

This week our guest is Gary Shapiro, CEO of CES, making good on the appearance that last week was handled by the CTA's futurist, Brian Comisky. In the news, more talk about copyrights as the 1924 "Steamboat Willie'' version of Mickey Mouse enters the public domain. XReal says it sold 350K pairs of its Air2 Assisted Reality smartglasses that provide…

Today our guest is, after some confusion, Brian Comisky, Futurist for CTA (which puts on CES). We start the show on a slow holiday news week with a discussion of the NY Times suit against OpenAI, apparently following unsuccessful negotiations. CES is the largest trade show in the world, with 130,000 people already registered. Brian joins us to disc…

This week's guest, Sarah Hill, CEO of Healium (note spelling) was guest #1 on our podcast, in July 2020. We were experimenting with both the format of the show and recording the podcast in VR. It was a relatively slow news week, except Bytedance was booted off Azure Cloud's OpenAI for using it to train its own model, which is strictly verboten. Ami…

Epic games scored a $92M win over Google for its decidedly anti-competitive app store, but what's really going to hurt is changing the business model of its app store. The EU AI Act puts some rules around transparency and copyright, Mistal AI raises $415M, and Open AI makes a deal with publisher Axel Springer. Tesla introduced a humanoid robot, Opt…

In the week's news was a flurry of AI announcements. Musk's Grok AI launches, and it has promise. A real-time connection to the Internet is valuable, even if it comes from Twitter. Meta launches Imagine, a very fast, very simple, text-to-image app, and other AI features. Google unveils a new, powerful LLM, Gemini, which will succeed Bard. Our guest…

Our guest this week is Joe Hunting, director of the award-winning HBO documentary, "We Met in VR." The hosts think big about events in tech, from OpenAI to Twitter, to Quantum Computing, IBM and AWS before a recap of the week's news, which includes a $55M financing round for text-to-video Gen AI app Pika Labs, and funding for three companies focuse…

The team is at full strength this week as we welcome Linda Jacobson, head of marketing for HaptX, the leader in VR gloves for enterprises. Rony kicks off the morning's tech news with an interesting rant about Tik-Tok, which he says is a threat to national security. Character AI is about to raise a billion dollars, mostly to train its characters, CI…

This week our guest is Michael Beneville, co-founder and Chief Creative Officer of AREA15, an immersive entertainment venue in Las Vegas, anchored by Meow Wolf's Omera Mart. First, Ted and Charlie recap busy news week, starting with Open AI's first Developer Day, and Musk's xAI announces Grok, which will incorporate a real-time newsfeed from Twitte…

This week we're wondering how exactly the new US AI regulations are going to work, and hoping the EU will be a little more specific. In an international, open-source world, is this even possible? On the heels of a $4B investment from Amazon, Anthropic AI is now taking $2B from Amazon's competitor, Google. Xpanceo is bringing AR contact lenses back.…