Welcome back to Spatial Beats, where we round up all the top news and happenings from around the spatial computing spectrum, including its escalating infusions with AI and other emerging tech. Let’s dive in…
The Lede
How many XR devices did Meta sell in Q4? AR Insider crunches the numbers and reverse engineers revenue disclosures in Meta’s earnings announcement this week. The result is an estimated 2.6 million devices sold across Quest 3, 3s, and Ray Ban Meta smartglasses. Is this a new high-water mark for Meta Reality Labs?
Feeling Spatial
YouTuber Marcus Brownlee gives the most in-depth, hands-on preview yet of the upcoming Samsung XR device, Project Moohan. Samsung’s collaboration with Google and Qualcomm has resulted in a device much less expensive than the Vision Pro, that can do all it does and more, powered by Google’s Gemini AI. I didn’t see anything in here to suggest they can succeed where low-priced Meta Quest and high priced Vision Pro (discontinued) struggle.
Infinite Reality Acquires Obsess to Expand Immersive Commerce. The financial terms were not disclosed. The acquisition follows Infinite Reality’s recent $3 billion funding round, which values the company at $12.25 billion. Founded in 2017, Obsess has powered over 400 virtual stores for brands including Ralph Lauren, L’Oréal, and Disney Music Group. CEO Neha Singh joins Infinite Reality as Chief Innovation Officer. The deal strengthens Infinite Reality’s position in the immersive tech market, leveraging AI to streamline virtual store creation and improve e-commerce engagement across platforms like Roblox and Apple Vision Pro.
Beats & Bites
- Meta Reality Labs Saw Record Revenue in Q4 2024, But Also Record Costs
- Lumus Launches Z-30 Optical Engine for Consumer AR Glasses
- Apple AR glasses and AirPods with cameras are all about AI
- Even Realities G1 show me what I want Apple to make
- HTC VIVE and Virtualware Launch New Enterprise Simulation Lab
- VR Veteran Fast Travel Games Announces Layoffs, Sales Decline in 2024
- Meta Quest 4 and Quest Pro ‘successor’ tipped to be in the works — what we know
- Haptikos Unveils Low-Cost Hand Exoskeleton for XR Haptics
- Samsung’s New Android XR Headset Shows Everyone Underestimated Vision Pro
- Meta is Experimenting with a Home Theater Environment for Quest’s Horizon OS
- Apple’s Newest Store Has A Dedicated Vision Pro Side Room
- I wore CaddieVision’s golf AR glasses and the course will never look the same
The AI Desk
Deepseek’s Light, Power Efficient and Fast AI Model Ignites Tech Industry Panic, leading to $600 Billion Nvidia sell-off on Monday. Last Friday, January 23rd, Chinese AI startup DeepSeek released its R1 model, an open-source reasoning AI that rivals leading models like OpenAI’s o1 but is 20 to 50 times more cost-effective. Following the release, DeepSeek’s app surpassed ChatGPT as the most-downloaded free app on the U.S. iOS App Store. The news triggered a massive sell-off in tech stocks, with Nvidia experiencing a record 17% drop, erasing nearly $600 billion in market value—the largest single-day loss for any company on Wall Street. Meta has reportedly assembled “war rooms” of engineers to understand how DeepSeek’s AI achieves such performance at a fraction of the cost. As it turns out, Deepseek’s may have illegally used OpenAI to develop its low-cost model. This enables approach enables China’s to skirt US export restrictions by reducing the amount of compute needed for AI. Wall Street analysts have call it AI’s “Sputnik moment,” prompting a reevaluation of the competitive landscape in the global AI tech industry.
New Copyright Protection For AI, Plus New AI Models From Pica, Hailuo, And Bytedance. Copyright Office: AI-assisted films qualify for protection if shaped by human creativity. Pika 2.1, Hailuo, and Bytedance launch new AI video tools.
Follow the Money
SoftBank is in discussions to lead a $500 million funding round for Skild AI. This would give the Pittsburgh-based robotics startup a ~ $4 billion valuation. Founded in 2023, Skild AI is developing a scalable foundation model for robotics, enabling machines to interact safely and dexterously with humans. This investment follows a $300 million round in July 2024, led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, Coatue, SoftBank, and Jeff Bezos’s Bezos Expeditions.
ElevenLabs Voice AI Closes Series C funding round of $250 million. The round was led by ICONIQ Growth, bringing its valuation to between $3 billion and $3.3 billion. Founded in 2022 by ex-Google engineer Piotr Dąbkowski and ex-Palantir strategist Mati Staniszewski, ElevenLabs has previously raised $19 million in a Series A round in June 2023 and $80 million in a Series B round in January 2024. The latest funding round highlights the recent success the company is having with expressive, convincing voices for AI applications.
Little Umbrella Raises $2M to Expand AI-Powered Social Gaming. The Palo Alto-based developer of AI-driven social games, has secured a $2 million seed round from investors including Virtual Reality Fund, a16z speedrun, Mark Pincus’s Workplay Ventures, Ubiquoss Investment, Disrupt.com, Breakpoint Ventures, GFR Fund, and angel investors Matt Bilbey and Ryan Peterson. The company’s first title, Death by AI, has attracted 20 million players. The team includes former Meta, AppLovin, and Gallium Studios executives.
The World Outside
Google Says It Will Re-Name Gulf of Mexico on its Maps app. In a surprising show of obedience, the world’s fourth largest company has agreed to update its maps app to comply with the US President’s recent executive order that it be changed to “The Gulf of America.” Mexico is going to issue its own order to the company, so its citizens will still see The Gulf as it has always been named on Maps. No word on what other countries will see, but here in the US, I guess we see that the government wants us to see. Funny, because the new US administration is at the same time claiming to have won the war on censorship.
Meta Amicably Settles Trump Lawsuit. Google’s not the only company getting with the new program. Meta agreed to pay $25 million to settle a lawsuit filed by President Donald Trump in 2021, following the suspension of his social media accounts after the January 6 Capitol riot. The settlement resolves allegations of “impermissible censorship” by Meta. Notably, Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts were reinstated in early 2023, and he resumed posting in March 2023. The money will go to Trump’s presidential library.
Spatial Audio
For more spatial commentary & insights, check out the AI/XR Podcast, hosted by the author of this column, Charlie Fink, Ted Schilowitz, former studio executive and co-founder of Red Camera, and Rony Abovitz, founder of Magic Leap. This week our guest is Elizabeth Baron, Founder, Immersionary Enterprises, LLC, Senior Advisor, Intelligent Immersive Simulation, UNMC iEXCEL. Formerly Global Lead, Immersive Reality for Ford Motor Company Product Development. You can find it on podcasting platforms Spotify, iTunes, and YouTube.
Charlie Fink is an author and futurist focused on spatial computing. See his books here. Spatial Beats contains insights and inputs from Fink’s collaborators including Paramount Pictures futurist Ted Shilowitz.
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