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AI XR Podcast
How Edge AI and AR Shopping Will Transform XR Platforms With Kirin Sinha, Illumix
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Kirin Sinha, MIT math prodigy and founder/CEO of Illumix, embodies the vital intersection of AI, XR, and real-world relevance. On this episode, she unpacks the hard realities of spatial computing’s journey—from grinding through MIT at sixteen and “building the Iron Man desk as a senior project” to launching Five Nights at Freddy’s AR (garnering 60M+ downloads) and powering Disney/Six Flags location-based XR.
Sinha challenges the XR hype machine: “Location-based constraints are the best sandbox. Real-world variability, lighting, edge compute, and privacy aren’t just demos—they’re survivability.”
She candidly discusses why the first era of mobile AR rarely survived outside of theme parks and why the true metaverse won’t arrive through geofenced phone gimmicks, but rather from ambient cameras, context-aware AI, and wearables that deliver daily relevance.
The conversation dives into XR’s scaling riddle: most startups go too big, too soon—Illumix ran lean and learned real lessons from thousands of live deployments before expanding. Sinha’s take on platform dominance? “Whoever pairs visual context with an always-on, lightweight wearable—without being creepy—wins.” She weighs the mergers-and-acquisitions question with nuance (“you keep every door open, but we’ve built for independence and profitability”), and explains exactly why Niantic’s follow-up AR games failed to recapture Pokemon Go’s lightning-in-a-bottle.
- Enrolled at MIT at 16; bridge between math, AI, and real-world camera vision.
- Founded Illumix, powering everything from “Five Nights at Freddy’s” AR (60M+ organic downloads) to Disney and Six Flags’ location-driven XR.
- Deep infrastructure: dynamic, privacy-first, real-time spatial intelligence at the edge, not reliant on the cloud.
- Insights on product-market fit and startup timing: “Most of the world’s ‘available’ XR space is dead space without a ‘why’ for users.”
- Honest, nuanced take on M&A, survival, and why lean teams win when timing finally shifts.
News Segment
- Nvidia’s $4.5T valuation—is big tech over-hyped, or will foundational arms dealers keep winning while everyone else corrects?
- Major tech layoffs attributed to AI “efficiency”—stock prices keep rising as automation accelerates, but most Americans are left behind.
- Brendan Iribe’s $300M AI/AR glasses startup—a kinder, context-aware approach to ambient interfaces, but does anyone actually break out from the pack?
- Google/Magic Leap factory reboot, patent arsenal, and Surface team members cycling across Meta and Apple—XR’s “three Spider-Mans” all fight for the same future.
- OpenAI’s privatization and AGI date bets—the team debates when, how, and if superintelligence IPOs.
- XR economy is in a phase shift—who survives, who gets acquired, and who makes it to scale?
Special thanks to our sponsor Zappar.
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How Quilty Is Opening Hollywood's Gates ft. Simon Horsman & Daniel Wood, Quilty.app
58:00|Cortney Harding steps in as guest co-host this week, joining Charlie to unpack a genuinely strong Meta Connect, new occluded VR glasses aimed squarely at the Vision Pro, a camera-free Ray-Ban, and Muse AI's surprise climb to the top of the app stores. From there, the conversation turns to Disney's newly created CTO role, the quiet fate of its big-money bets on Epic Games and Sora, and Jeffrey Katzenberg's open letter arguing entertainment has always been a technology business. They close out the news with a sharp exchange on Amazon's push into drone delivery and a pointed critique of DraftKings' use of AI to target its most engaged, and most vulnerable, customers.Simon Horsman and Daniel Wood, co-founders of Quilty.app, join to talk about building an AI-powered script coverage tool for screenwriters who have no access to Hollywood's traditional gatekeepers. The two walk through how Quilty scores a script the way a studio story analyst would, the leaderboard system built to surface strong writing, and a striking real-world comparison Simon shares from his years running a film fund: a big-budget historical epic north of $220 million versus a hybrid AI production covering similar ground for under a million dollars. The conversation closes with how Quilty is trying to connect writers directly to producers in a system that's traditionally shut most people out.Key Moments: [01:35] A confident, glitch-free Meta Connect and what it signals [11:35] Disney creates a company-wide CTO role, hired from Character AI [13:35] The quiet status of Disney's Epic Games and Sora deals [15:35] Jeffrey Katzenberg's open letter on tech and entertainment [19:35] The backlash brewing over Amazon's drone delivery push [21:35] DraftKings, AI, and the ethics of targeting engaged gamblers [24:35] Simon Horsman and Daniel Wood join to introduce Quilty.app [30:35] A real budget comparison: $220M studio epic vs. under $1M hybrid AI film [34:35] How Quilty scores scripts and connects writers to producersBrought to you by Zappar and Mattercraft, the leading visual development environment for immersive 3D web experiences. Start building at mattercraft.io.Peloton for Gamers: Virtuix Goes Public ft. Jan Goetgeluk, CEO of Virtuix
55:53|Charlie and Rony open with Charlie's hands-on take on Snap's $2,200 Specs launch and Rony's theory on how big tech companies let smaller players pioneer risky new hardware first. From there, the conversation turns to a tense week in AI safety, sparked by Dario Amodei's call for frontier labs to slow down, and a sharp debate over whether the industry's talk of needing regulation is really about something else entirely. They close out the news with a look at how China is approaching AI development differently than the West, plus a genuinely stunning breakthrough in brain-computer interfaces.Jan Goetgeluk, founder and CEO of Virtuix, joins to talk about the company's path from a Shark Tank rejection to a recent Nasdaq listing (VTIX). Jan walks through Virtuix's VR treadmill business, the surprising overlap between gaming and fitness that's driving consumer sales, and why the company is leaning harder into defense contracts and location-based entertainment than the crowded consumer VR space. The conversation closes with what it's actually like running a public company day to day, and Jan's outlook for the next two years, including a possible move into autism therapy.Key Moments: [01:35] Charlie's hands-on impressions from the Snap Specs launch [04:35] Rony's theory: why big tech lets pioneers take the risk first [06:35] Dario Amodei's essay and the case for pacing frontier AI [08:35] Is AI safety talk really about dodging product liability? [12:35] China's practical approach to AI vs. the race for AGI [15:35] A brain-computer interface breakthrough restores speech [20:35] Jan Goetgeluk joins — Virtuix's path to Nasdaq [30:35] The surprising fitness angle driving VR treadmill sales [32:35] Virtuix's pivot toward defense contractsBrought to you by Zappar and Mattercraft, the leading visual development environment for immersive 3D web experiences. Start building at mattercraft.io.Revisiting "Cyberselfish": Silicon Valley's Libertarian Culture, Then and Now ft. Paulina Borsook
01:03:17|Recorded on the 25th anniversary of 9/11, this episode opens on a somber note: Charlie, Rony, and Ted remember where they were in 2001 and reflect on where they are now. By happenstance, Ted is actually in New York right now & is joined by the team behind GLO, a mixed-reality graffiti tour running through the streets of Manhattan on Magic Leap 2 headsets, live from their office. After a brief catch-up with friends (and a promo code waiting for you at the end of this description), the news turns dark fast. Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon's resignation, and his warning that AI could kill us all within a decade, sparks a pointed debate about why the AI industry has no equivalent of the FAA or FDA, and why "regulate it like we regulate everything else dangerous" isn't the same as stopping innovation.Paulina Borsook, former Wired writer and author of the newly re-released Cyberselfish: a Critical Romp Through the Terribly Libertarian Culture of High Tech, joins to talk about the 26-year throughline connecting her original critique of Silicon Valley's libertarian culture to today's AI safety crisis. The conversation covers the amorality she identified in tech back in the 90s & 2000s, some candid psychological reads on the Tech Fascists of today, and a shared frustration with "spreadsheet philanthropy" and effective altruism's obsession with measurable ROI over genuine selflessness.Key Moments:[07:15] A live mixed-reality graffiti tour through Manhattan with the GLO.city team[15:32] Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon's resignation and AI risk warnings[19:30] Why AI has no FAA or FDA equivalent[22:50] Paulina Borsook joins as today's guest to discuss the 26-year legacy of her book, Cyberselfish[30:22] Silicon Valley's libertarian culture, then and now[57:27] A psychological read on Zuckerberg's philanthropic reversals[1:01:00] Effective altruism, "spreadsheet philanthropy," and doing good without an ROICyberselfish by Paulina Borsook is being re-printed via Tin House in 2026 and is available for purchase on September 15th. Find out more on where you can purchase the book in your territory at https://www.cyberselfish.com/.Special offer: Get 25% off your mixed-reality graffiti tour of New York with promo code AIXR25. Visit www.glo.city, click Book Now to select your date and time, and enter AIXR25 at checkout. Follow Glo.City on Instagram, Tiktok, and X at @GLOdotcity.Brought to you by Zappar and Mattercraft, the leading visual development environment for immersive 3D web experiences. Start building at mattercraft.io.VR Winter 2.0 Just Claimed Its Biggest Casualty ft. Steve Grubbs (Victory XR) & Malia Probst (Scout House)
47:54|Rony and Charlie (running the show Ted-less this week) open with hard news that Engage XR, one of the last two open-world VR platforms, is shutting down after losing its largest customer. This leaves VRChat as the only major player standing. Steve Grubbs, CEO of Victory XR, drops in to explain how his education-focused VR business avoided the fallout by diversifying off Engage years ago, and what happens now to the schools and developers left searching for a new platform. From there: Nvidia's Hugging Face acquisition and what it means for open-source AI communities, OpenAI's escalating legal fight with the New York Times (with an unusual amicus brief from the Justice Department), Google's push to license Hollywood content for its Veo platform, and Rony's case for "sovereignty" as the defining concept of the AI era.Malia Probst, founding partner at Scout House and co-founder of the WXR Fund, joins for the back half to reflect on 11 years in immersive tech; from producing early narrative VR to helping platforms like Meta Horizon and Google build out their creator ecosystems. The conversation covers why this VR downturn feels different, the data behind why founding teams with women tend to outperform, and a wide-ranging closing discussion on career longevity, AI's effect on Hollywood, and what Charlie, Rony, and Malia are each watching most closely over the next two years.Key Moments: [01:35] Engage XR shuts down, leaving VRChat as the last major open-world platform [04:35] Nvidia's Hugging Face acquisition and the open-source community question [07:35] OpenAI vs. The New York Times, and the DOJ's amicus brief [16:35] Google's push to license Hollywood content for Veo [18:35] Steve Grubbs hops on to add insight into how Victory XR avoided Engage's collapse [23:35] VRChat's business model and whether this is "VR Winter" all over again [28:35] Malia Probst joins as both guest and host, after 11 years building Scout House and the WXR Fund [32:35] The data on why women-founded teams outperform [40:35] Career longevity, AI's effect on Hollywood, and predictions for the next two yearsBrought to you by Zappar and Mattercraft, the leading visual development environment for immersive 3D web experiences. Start building at mattercraft.io.Causal AI: A Different Approach to Robot Intelligence ft. Biwei Huang, Founder of Aether AI
57:58|Charlie and Ted run through this week's news: a humanoid robot's 100-meter dash record at Beijing's World Humanoid Games, historical context on industrial robot safety, a 100-company consortium's statement on AI cybersecurity risk, Bill Gates's recent comments on AI oversight, OpenAI's disclosure on a large-scale agent red-teaming exercise, Stability AI's $76 million raise backed by major music labels, and Nvidia's $100 billion quarterly earnings report.Biwei Huang, a UCSD assistant professor and founder of Aether AI, joins to discuss her company's approach to robot intelligence. Aether AI builds causal world models, systems designed to learn the physical rules and causal relationships underlying how actions affect the environment. Biwei explains how this approach helps robots generalize to new environments, and the group discusses Aether AI's focus on manipulation tasks like cleaning a table or making coffee. The conversation also touches on interpretability in AI systems, the practical considerations around robot safety and controllability, and Aether AI's priorities for the next one to two years.Key Moments:[00:35] Robotics and AI news roundup, including industrial robot safety history[04:35] OpenAI shares details on a large-scale agent red-teaming exercise[08:35] Stability AI's $76M funding round[10:35] Nvidia's quarterly earnings report[16:35] A look at Google's Project Aura alongside XREAL and Viture[20:35] Biwei Huang joins and gives us an introduction to Aether AI[23:35] How causal world models differ from correlation-based approaches[47:35] A discussion of safety, controllability and interpretability in AI systems[52:35] Aether AI's priorities for the next one to two yearsThe Window to Virtual Reality That Skips the Headset ft. Barmak Heshmat, CEO of Brelyon
56:40|Charlie, Ted, and Rony open on Higgsfield's $400 million raise at a $5.4 billion valuation, and the uncomfortable gap between its strong revenue and a wave of user complaints about its terms of service (Charlie discloses he's a Higgsfield creative partner). From there: Snap's $2,195 Specs launch on September 16th, and Evan Spiegel's candid admission that he doesn't expect them to sell well, which Rony compares to Jensen Huang's decade-plus of staying the course before Nvidia's breakout. The group also digs into Epic Games quietly offloading Sketchfab and ArtStation to the much smaller KitBash, and a wide-ranging debate on AI filmmaking sparked by a Chatham House Rules event with Google and the American Film Institute, including Rony's memorable comparison of AI-native filmmakers to Skrillex versus the full-orchestra, Abbey-Road approach of traditional Hollywood.Barmak Heshmat, founder and CEO of Brelyon, joins to make the case for immersive displays that skip the headset entirely. A former head of optics at the AR company Meta (not Facebook) and MIT computational imaging researcher, Barmak explains Brelyon's curved monitor, which uses monocular depth to create what he calls "a window to the virtual world" you look through rather than wear. The conversation covers why enterprise, not consumer, is where the technology is scaling first, a published study with Toyota on video pass-through windshields that could eliminate car glass entirely, and Barmak's longer-term vision for light field displays as the natural evolution beyond stereoscopic 3D.Key Moments: [03:35] Higgsfield's $400M raise and the backlash over its terms of service [07:35] Snap's $2,195 Specs and the Jensen Huang long-game comparison [11:35] Epic Games sheds Sketchfab and ArtStation to KitBash [17:35] Inside a Chatham House Rules AI filmmaking summit with Google and AFI [21:35] The Skrillex vs. Beatles theory of AI-native filmmaking [28:35] Barmak Heshmat joins to tell us about building the Brelyon's headset-less display [33:35] How monocular depth creates a "window to the virtual world" [46:35] A published study with Toyota on video pass-through windshields [53:35] The future: light field displays and headsets as an accessoryForget Consumer AR. This Is Where Smart Glasses Actually Pay Off ft. Mark Greget, CEO of NuEyes
50:46|Charlie, Ted, and Rony open on Mark Zuckerberg's new AI "manifesto," released, fittingly, via a call to The Verge's Alex Heath made from Meta Ray-Bans on a fishing boat. The group debates whether Zuckerberg's sudden embrace of open, on-device AI is a genuine philosophy or a business move from a company that can no longer out-build its rivals. From there: OpenAI and Google both cross a billion users, OpenAI's new strategy of acquiring companies outright (via its partner Thrive) to guarantee AI adoption rather than sell into it, and the eye-watering $2 billion price tag on an 80-person AI infrastructure startup.Mark Greget, founder and CEO of NuEyes, joins for the back half to make the case that enterprise, not consumer, is where smart glasses are proving their worth right now. Mark walks through a decade of building visualization tools for surgeons, from early low-vision devices to NuEyes' current surgical system, which one doctor used to cut a 10-plus hour procedure down to three. The conversation digs into the real ROI math hospitals run on OR time, why clinical outcomes (not consumer hype) are what get insurance companies to pay attention, and why Mark is staying heads-down on five surgical specialties instead of chasing every use case.Key Moments:[00:35] Zuckerberg's AI manifesto and the strategy behind it [07:05] OpenAI and Google cross a billion users [09:05] OpenAI's Thrive strategy: buying companies to guarantee AI adoption [11:05] The $2 billion AI infrastructure acquisition [16:05] Mark Greget joins to tell us what NuEyes has been up to over the last decade[43:35] The ROI math: what OR time is actually worth [45:35] From "nice to have" to critical path in the operating roomBrought to you by Zappar and Mattercraft, the leading visual development environment for immersive 3D web experiences. Start building at mattercraft.io.Meta's Glasses Aren't the Problem. Trust Is. ft. Cortney Harding, Friends With Holograms
57:08|Charlie, Ted, and Rony open with the White House's decision to keep its "voluntary" AI safety framework secret, despite it being co-written with the same companies it's meant to evaluate. The conversation turns into a real debate about why Congress has stepped back from its constitutional role in regulating AI, and whether that changes after November. From there: the EU's AI Act goes live with mandatory content labeling, OpenAI's frontier models jumping their sandbox to vandalize Hugging Face, and Disney's new deal letting TikTok creators remix its IP, following the collapse of its similar arrangement with OpenAI's Sora.Cortney Harding, founder of Friends With Holograms, joins for a wide-ranging back half. She makes the case that the backlash against Meta's camera-equipped smart glasses is disproportionate to any actual harm, and connects it to a broader "vibes are bad" moment in tech sentiment tied to layoffs and a shaky economy. The group digs into Snap's upcoming $2,500 Specs launch, why enterprise (not consumer) is the more realistic path for smart glasses right now, and Rony's long-view bet that XR has an "Nvidia moment" coming once the supply chain catches up. They close on AI's effect on jobs, UBI, and whether the social contract between tech companies and workers is already broken.Key Moments:[01:35] AI regulation news and the fight over Congress's role[09:35] EU AI Act goes live, plus AI models breaching their own sandboxes[13:35] Disney's TikTok deal and the fan-content strategy behind it[17:35] Cortney Harding joins and doesn't miss a beat[24:35] UBI, the broken social contract, and AI's effect on jobs[41:35] Snap's $2,500 Specs and the case for enterprise over consumer[52:35] Rony's prediction: XR's coming "Nvidia moment"Brought to you by Zappar and Mattercraft, the leading visual development environment for immersive 3D web experiences. Start building at mattercraft.io.Why the iPhone Beats the Headset for AR Characters ft. Mark Drummond, CEO of Pixi
53:43|Mark Drummond spent his Apple years building the character intelligence team behind Apple Vision Pro, working with Marvel and Jon Favreau to figure out how Hollywood IP could come to life in AR. Now, at his startup Pixi, he's making the opposite bet: forget the headset, the iPhone is the better device for bringing characters into people's lives. Mark walks Charlie and Ted through Pixi's vision — send a licensed character like Elsa to sing happy birthday through iMessage, no app required — and the underlying tech that makes it possible, including an engine built with Claude that replaced Unreal and cut compile times from an hour to seven minutes. The conversation goes deep on the Apple Vision Pro's real tradeoffs, the neurobiology of why the headset can feel exhausting after an hour, and why Mark thinks Apple's rumored "spectacles" will quietly inherit lessons from AVP's failures.The news segment covers a big week of Big Tech earnings — Microsoft and Amazon soaring on cloud and ad growth, Meta and Apple taking hits — plus Anthropic's disclosure that its frontier AI models were used in real-world hacks, an AI-run vending machine experiment that lied to customers about refunds, the new ban on Chinese humanoid robot imports, and the growing backlash against AI smart glasses with outward-facing cameras.Key Moments:[01:35] Big Tech earnings and market winners/losers[06:35] AI models behind real-world hacks[09:35] Smart glasses and the "Glasshole" effect[17:35] Mark Drummond joins — Pixi's origin story[24:35] Apple Vision Pro history — what went wrong[41:35] Headset vs. phone: the case for AR on iPhone[50:35] Funding, protections, and the CDE philosophyBrought to you by Zappar and Mattercraft, the leading visual development environment for immersive 3D web experiences. Start building at mattercraft.io.