Welcome back to our weekly roundup of happenings from XR and AI realms. Let’s dive in…
The Lede
Venture Capital and M&A are not subject to the vicissitudes of the public markets, as this week has seen nearly a dozen big, big funding announcements. Alphabet’s earnings reported the four trillion dollar company had an enormous year, generating over $400 billion in revenue. Nonetheless, their projected $91 billion spend on AI sent some investors running for the doors, pushing its stock down 5% after the announcement on Tuesday.
Superbowl LX is Sunday. The ads are the co-stars in the biggest television event of the year. Google, Meta, other AI hyperscalers, and start-ups flush with cash will be there. Anthropic is making its big game debut with spots poking fun at OpenAI’s ChatGPT’s plans to place ads in its results. Vodka brand Svedka and AI startup Artlist (see their video below) will debut ads created with generative tools. This is surely not the complete list.
This is the longest roundup of the year, so buckle up. I’m out of breath trying to keep up!
Follow the Money
Apple acquires Q AI in a deal estimated to be over $1.6 billion. Apple quietly acquired Israeli startup Q AI as part of its broader push into on-device embodied AI. Q AI has worked on systems related to perception, intent recognition, and sensor-driven interaction, areas closely aligned with Apple’s work on spatial computing and wearables. Coming amid increased competition around multimodal AI, the deal suggests Apple is continuing to prioritize tight integration between hardware, sensors, and intelligence, rather than cloud-first AI services. Apple’s acquisition of Q AI was not officially disclosed, but multiple credible reports place the valuation between about $1.6 billion and up to nearly $2 billion, which would make it one of Apple’s largest acquisitions ever, second only to its 2014 purchase of Beats. Apple itself did not confirm financial terms.
xAI merges with SpaceX and X. Elon Musk confirmed a corporate consolidation that brings xAI, SpaceX, and X under a single combined structure. The move formalizes what had already been an operational overlap, with shared leadership, shared compute strategy, and shared data ambitions. SpaceX provides launch infrastructure, satellite connectivity via Starlink, and a massive capital base. X contributes real-time social data and distribution. xAI supplies model development and inference. Musk framed the merger as a way to accelerate progress toward general intelligence by aligning compute, data, and deployment. He says they’re going to put giant data centers in space, solving critical energy and cooling needs of the AI cloud. The consolidation creates one of the most vertically integrated AI platforms in the market, spanning hardware, networks, models, and consumer-facing distribution. A one to two trillion dollar public offering is expected later this year, unless X merges with Tesla, as some speculate it may do.
ElevenLabs raises $500M at $11B valuation. Voice AI startup ElevenLabs closed a $500 million Series D funding round led by Sequoia Capital, valuing the company at about $11 billion, more than triple its valuation from a year earlier. The round included follow-on participation from investors such as a16z, ICONIQ Growth, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Evantic Capital, BroadLight Capital, NFDG, Valor Capital Group, AMP Coalition, and Smash Capital, bringing total capital raised to over $780 million. ElevenLabs, founded in 2022 and best known for generative voice synthesis, reported strong revenue growth, closing 2025 with roughly $330 million in ARR. Two weeks ago, Eleven Labs expanded into Generative AI music, competing with Suno and Udio.
Rony Abovitz’ Synthbee AI raises $100 million. Synthbee announced a $100 million funding round led by Crosspoint Capital Partners. Abovitz (serial founder of Mako Robotics and Magic Leap) says his new company will focus on enterprise AI deployment, positioning its platform around secure model orchestration, governance, and integration into regulated environments. Synthbee says customer demand has shifted from experimentation to production scale systems, particularly in financial services, healthcare, and government-adjacent sectors, where secure and clean data is mission-critical. The funding will be used to expand enterprise sales, compliance tooling, and international operations. The raise places Synthbee among the larger private companies focused specifically on enterprise AI infrastructure.
Alphabet revenue exceeds $400 billion, but investors blanch at the price tag of AI. Alphabet reported record revenue while signaling continued acceleration in AI-related capital expenditures. The company emphasized infrastructure investment across data centers, custom silicon, and networking to support Gemini model development and deployment. Management framed AI spending as a long-term platform investment rather than a near-term margin play, with monetization flowing through search, cloud services, and enterprise tooling. Alphabet also highlighted the rising demand for AI-enhanced advertising products and developer services. The scale of the spending underscores how entrenched incumbents are using balance sheet strength to absorb the cost of frontier model development.
Amazon invests ~$50 billion in OpenAI. Amazon confirmed a significant investment relationship with OpenAI, expanding collaboration around cloud infrastructure and AI services. Reports suggest Amazon will invest up to about $50 billion in OpenAI as part of the AI company’s latest fundraising round, which could seek up to roughly $100 billion in new capital and value OpenAI at around $830 billion. The deal positions Amazon Web Services as a major provider of compute for OpenAI workloads while allowing Amazon to integrate OpenAI models into its own enterprise offerings. Sounds great, but there is a question. Isn’t this a classic round trip? I invest in you, so you have the money to buy from me. The investment raises your valuation in anticipation of an IPO, which in turn raises the value of my investment. It’s a win-win-win-win for everyone except the next investor. Once upon a time companies got rung up for that.
Flora raised $42 million, led by Redpoint Ventures, for its node-based design tool aimed at creative professionals. The platform allows designers to build complex visual systems through modular, connected components rather than linear workflows. Flora positions itself at the intersection of generative AI and procedural design, enabling rapid iteration while preserving creative control. With over 175 companies, including industry leaders like Adobe, focused on generative AI workflows, competition is fierce and consolidation is certain.
Lotus Health raises $35 million for a free AI doctor. The AI-powered medical service offers free patient consultations. Lotus says its system is for triage and guidance rather than a replacement for licensed clinicians. The platform uses automation to handle common questions and route patients to human care when necessary. Lotus Health is part of a growing wave of AI healthcare startups testing alternative economics, often supported by venture capital rather than direct patient billing. Regulators and medical professionals continue to scrutinize such systems, particularly around accuracy and liability, but investor interest remains strong as healthcare costs and access gaps continue to widen.
Fibr AI raises $7.5 million for agentic web. Fibr.ai announced a $7.5 million funding round to build what it calls an agentic web, where every URL becomes an interactive AI-driven experience. The company envisions websites that do not simply present static content but actively engage users through conversational agents that understand intent and context. Fibr positions its technology as infrastructure for publishers, brands, and developers seeking to move beyond traditional page-based design. With web traffic declining due to top-level AI summaries, it is critical for vendors to optimize visits. Maybe AI can fix the problem caused by AI.
The AI Desk
Amazon has rolled out Alexa+. The next-generation AI assistant is now available to users in the United States after nearly a year of early access. The service is included at no additional cost for Amazon Prime members and can be accessed on Alexa-enabled devices, via the Alexa app, and on the web. Non-Prime users can try a limited free version or subscribe for about $20 per month. Alexa+ uses a mix of Amazon’s Nova models and third-party models to provide more natural conversation and extended capabilities such as booking travel, managing calendars, and handling complex voice and text queries.
Moltbook is a new social network built for autonomous AI agents running on the open-source OpenClaw platform, and it has rapidly drawn millions of such bots. On a less busy news week, this would surely be our lead story. The exponential growth of Moltbook has exposed how unprepared security teams and organizations are for agentic AI. Researchers warn that posts on the platform can act as vectors for malicious instructions, prompt injection, and data leaks, because agents ingest and act on untrusted content, but ethical and security frameworks lag behind these innovations.
Artlist will show a Big Game television commercial created entirely in-house using its own AI tools, completed in under five days. The spot was conceived, produced, and executed by Artlist’s internal team and parodies several Big Game ads already airing this year, including work from Fanatics, Bud Light, and Pepsi.
Phantom X and filmmaker Kavan Cardoza, known as Kavan the Kid, are producing a new Freepik Original series, meaning they used Freepik’s AI tools and got some financial support from them. The Chronicles of Bone is a dark fantasy series set in a post-apocalyptic world ruled by a vampiric empire, and inhabited by mythic figures like Tinkerbell, Captain Hook, Robin Hood and King Arthur.
Spatial Audio
For more spatial commentary & insights, check out the AI/XR Podcast, hosted by the author of this column, Charlie Fink, and Ted Schilowitz, former studio executive and futurist for Paramount and Fox, and Rony Abovitz, founder of Magic Leap. This week, our guest is Kristi Woolsey, who heads the AR practice at Boston Consulting Group. 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.