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
Pico Slimming Down For Its Next XR Headset codenamed “Swan.” It offloads processing to a separate “puck” which makes it much smaller, lighter, and sleeker than the Quest, or the Pico 4. TikTok parent Bytedance purchased Pico VR when they were feeling heady about taking on Meta head-to-head. If you’re beating them at social media, they reasoned, they can be beat in VR, too. Still, Bytedance is a huge platform for selling things. They are much larger in China than TikTok is in the US. Hamish Hector published a Tech Radar opinion piece on the topic: Pico’s next XR headset could be lighter and smaller than ever, but I hope it just skips to AR glasses instead.
Feeling Spatial
The Venice Film Festival has revealed its 2025 Venice Immersive lineup, featuring 69 groundbreaking XR projects from 27 countries. This year’s selection includes 30 competitive works, among them world and international premieres, spanning VR, mixed reality, and immersive installations . The remaining 39 pieces are non-competitive showcases, including “Best of Experiences,” “Best of Worlds” from VRChat creators, and five titles from the Biennale College Cinema – Immersive lab. An international jury headed by Eliza McNitt will award top honors. The immersive works will be staged on Venice’s Lazzaretto Vecchio island from August 26 to September 6.
Snap scales its in-stadium AR play. A new partnership with RWS Global brings Snapchat AR lenses to the big screens at sporting events around the world. Lucky (or unlucky) fans will get adorned with comical AR overlays that are team-centric or carry local flavor. But hopefully no kiss cams…
Follow the Money
Moonvalley Raises $84 million in Series B funding, led by General Catalyst, CAA, Comcast Ventures, CoreWeave, Khosla Ventures, and YCombinator. This brings the total raised by the Toronto startup to to $154 million. The company’s flagship Generative video tool, Marey, is now publicly available via subscription (starting at $14.99/month), offering filmmakers and brands advanced AI-driven visual effects and background footage. Unlike rivals accused of copyright infringement, Moonvalley trained Marey exclusively on licensed and original content, positioning it as an ethical, legally-compliant alternative. Founded by former DeepMind researchers, Moonvalley recently acquired Asteria, a new studio led by entrepreneur and producer Bryn Mooser, to bridge the gap between Generative AI video model development and real-world entertainment media production workflows.
The AI Desk
Move Over Character.ai, Grok’s new Avatars DO go there. xAI’s Grok iOS app has launched “AI Companions” featuring 3D animated avatars. Two are available now with more on the way. Ani is an anime-style female voice companion in a provocative outfit. Rudy is a red panda with mood-based personalities, including a crude “Bad Rudy” mode. These companions interact via voice chat, change backgrounds, and unlock new behaviors as users build rapport. Reaching higher “relationship” levels with Ani reveals an NSFW mode which reportedly comes with more revealing images and explicit talk. The exchanges I tried with Ani had so much latency the exercise quickly became tiresome. There is no way I have the time to verify this reporting. I’m sure it will get better, and people love Character.ai, so.
A Fake Film About The Real World Is The First AI-generated Film Released in Theaters. Producers say “Post Truth” is the world’s first feature-length AI-generated documentary to secure a theatrical release. The film is being released in Turkey’s Başka Sinema on 58 screens in more than twenty cities this summer. Created by AI artist Alkan Avcıoğlu and co-written and co-produced with Vikki Bardot, the film uses over 55 hours of AI-generated content, including visuals, sound, music, and narration, to examine how society has arrived at a moment where truth and reality no longer matter.
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, founding Red Camera executive, and Rony Abovitz, founder of Magic Leap. This week our guest is Christopher Summerfield, author of These Strange Minds. 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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