Welcome back to our weekly roundup of happenings from XR and AI realms. Let’s dive in…
The Lede
The OpenAI versus Elon Musk trial produced a week of Silicon Valley psychodrama, leaked texts, diaries, and public accusations. Musk testified for three days, arguing OpenAI abandoned its nonprofit mission and became a de facto Microsoft subsidiary after the company’s multibillion-dollar partnership with Microsoft. Internal emails, diary entries, and text messages entered into evidence revealed years of conflict over control, money, and AI safety. Greg Brockman testified that Musk became furious after being denied majority control of OpenAI in 2017, to the point Brockman feared Musk might physically attack him. Another filing revealed Musk warning Brockman and Sam Altman they would become “the most hated men in America” if litigation continued. The trial increasingly looks less like a contract dispute and more like a custody battle over the future mythology of AI. A lot of things were said about Altman by Mira Murati, Greg Brockman and others that would damage most executive careers, but not if you’re a billionaire. In addition to the litigious Musk, Altman’s character has been questioned by many of people who worked for him and know him well, including relatives.
Feeling Spatial
The past week saw Q1 earnings reports from XR leaders such as Meta and Snap. Meta Reality Labs continues to see massive losses ($4 billion), but not as big as Meta’s CapEx spending on AI infrastructure ($20 billion). Meanwhile, VR is down while smart glasses are up – a familiar story that mirrors the XR market today. As for Snap, it beat estimates with 12 percent revenue growth that’s partly fueled by sponsored lenses, as well as the company’s revenue diversification into subscription services like Lens+. And of course, consumer Specs loom on the horizon, and consumed ample airtime in Snap’s earnings call. Their actual impact will be known later this year.
VRChat Is Big in Japan. VRChat released new usage stats, including 158,192 record concurrent users, 100,000 average daily concurrent users, more than 250,000 active communities, and 3.9x growth in Japan. The Japanese growth claim is not fully qualified, but Road to VR notes that Japan already ranks first for VRChat website visitors and second for mobile downloads, citing Mogura VR and Sensor Tower. The record concurrency came during a Japanese language concert tied to Netflix anime Cosmic Princess Kaguya. VRChat is also pushing a broader creator message, including a 50 percent creator cut and a new portal stressing that VR is no longer required. That matters as Rec Room shuttered last month and Meta pushes Horizon Worlds from VR toward mobile.
The AI Desk
Anthropic gets compute from SpaceX. Anthropic struck a compute deal with SpaceX, a strange alliance given Elon Musk’s public hostility toward the company. Axios framed it as Musk’s pragmatic turn, with SpaceX monetizing unused infrastructure while Anthropic gets needed capacity for Claude. Anthropic said the added compute will allow it to raise usage limits for Claude Code and the Claude API. Reuters Breakingviews reported the deal involves xAI’s Colossus 1 data center in Tennessee, which Anthropic will use as it races to keep up with demand. There is an obvious bond villain quality to Musk selling compute to a rival he has mocked, while also folding AI deeper into SpaceX ahead of a potential IPO. Evil, not evil, mostly business.
Trump administration weighs AI model reviews. The Trump administration is considering government oversight of new AI models before release, according to a New York Times report. The proposal under discussion would create an AI working group bringing together technology executives and government officials to study oversight procedures. A White House official would not confirm the report and said any policy announcement would come directly from the president. The move complicates the administration’s pro AI posture, which has emphasized speed, competition with China, and less regulation. The proximate concern appears to be frontier models with dangerous cyber capabilities. This is the first real sign that Washington may treat advanced AI releases more like critical infrastructure than consumer software.
Familiar, The Roomba guy’s second act. Colin Angle, the Roomba co-creator who helped put tens of millions of household robots into homes, is back with Familiar, a dog sized robot companion from his new company, Familiar Machines & Magic. This robot is not built to clean. It is designed to move around the home, respond through body language and sound, and form an emotional connection with its owner. The Verge reports that Familiar uses on device generative AI, Nvidia Jetson Orin hardware, cameras, microphones, and 23 degrees of freedom. It is aimed at children, eldercare, companionship, and loneliness. It does not talk, by design. Angle says it could launch next year, priced around the cost of pet ownership. Whatever that means. We saw Ollobot at CES in January. It’s a bit like R2D2 dressed up like Furby. Casio’s palm size AI pet, Moffit, was a holiday bestseller for the company.
Downtime
Coinbase cuts 14 percent of staff. Coinbase said it will lay off about 700 employees, or 14 percent of its workforce, as part of a restructuring meant to reduce costs and increase use of AI tools. CEO Brian Armstrong said the company will flatten management to five layers below the CEO and COO, require managers to contribute more directly, and experiment with small teams using AI, including one person teams combining engineering, design, and product management. Coinbase expects $50 million to $60 million in severance costs. Armstrong cited crypto market volatility and said AI is changing how the company works, with engineers shipping in days what previously took teams weeks.
Ask.com dies. I didn’t know they were still alive. I remember when Ask debuted in the late 90s. The biggest search engines were AltaVista, Excite, and Yahoo, which was a searchable database. Jeeves had a helpful answer for online searches: just ask, and we’ll parse the question with you. Natural language search. What a concept. Parent company IAC said it was discontinuing search as it narrows its focus on core properties like People. The final Ask.com message says “Jeeves’ spirit endures” so maybe it will be reincarnated as a chatbot.
Cinematic Corner
The Seventh episode of Kavan the Kid Cardoza’s Magnific original series, The Chronicles of Bone – Chapter One: A Vengeful Fairy just dropped. It may be the best one yet, and there’s only one to go. Cardoza is among the most talented AI filmmakers, as his storytelling exceeds any of the technologies he uses.
Marco Magario dropped HOLY GRAiL, an extraordinary cinematic comedy adventure set in Renaissance Florence, 1503. Magario writes on YouTube that he wrote, created, and scored the fifteen minute film with AI in ten days. I just love the zeal and energy of the storytelling.
Paul Trillo’s new AI short film, “The Most Perfect Perfect Person,” stars musician and internet performance artist Poppy. The film imagines a company called Aura that trains an AI clone on influencer Poppy’s entire digital footprint, promising to remove anxiety, indecision, and the burden of public performance. Executive producer Edward Saatchi calls it “the first AI film based on a true story,” referencing Poppy’s long running exploration of synthetic online personas. Visually, the film mixes live action, generative imagery, cloned performances, and recursive self-imitation.
Watch the last three episodes of Linda’s Last Podcast below. Produced by the author of this column, you can see the series archive and subscribe on YouTube.
Spatial Audio
This column has a companion, the AI/XR Podcast, hosted by its author, Charlie Fink, and Ted Schilowitz, former studio executive and futurist for Paramount and Fox, and Rony Abovitz, founder of Magic Leap and Synthbee AI.
Our latest guests were are Caspar Thykier, co-founder and CEO of Zappar, and Connell Guald, Zappar’s co-founder and CTO (see episode below). Our next guest is creative technologist, inventor, investor, and co-founder of Keyhole, which became Google Earth, Dave Lorenzini.
Episodes drop on Tuesdays, and you can find them on podcasting platforms Spotify, iTunes, and YouTube.
Charlie Fink is the producer and co-host of the AIXR Podcast and teaches at Chapman University and ASU. Fink is the producer of the vertical gen AI social media series, “Linda’s Last Podcast” (2026) and serves as CEO of Cinemation.AI, an AI animation studio he co-founded with film director Rob Minkoff, whose vertical anime series, Speed Queen, is in pre-production. He is the author of the critically acclaimed AR-enabled books Charlie Fink’s Metaverse (2017), Convergence, Or How the World Will Be Painted With Data (2019), and the upcoming AI, The End of Hollywood, and What Comes Next.
Header image credit: Tingey Injury Law Firm on Unsplash