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cover art for This Week In XR 12-18-2020

This Week in XR Podcast

This Week In XR 12-18-2020

Season 1, Ep. 17

CMO and CRO of Evercast Marcie Jastrow joins Ted and Charlie to discuss this week in XR: Rec Room and Roblox and the current state of VR for the future.


Check back here next week for your scoop on the latest XR news.

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  • The AI/XR Podcast February 21st, 2025 ft. Naeem Talukdar, CEO Moonvalley AI

    49:17|
    This week we welcome Naeem Talukdar, CEO Moonvalley AI, whose company is building a "clean" generative video model, trained exclusively on licensed video content. In the news, Niantic is selling its Pokemon Go business. The failed Humane Pin, a great idea with shockingly bad execution, is sold to HP for $116M for parts and patents, and Microsoft introduced Majorana 1, a new quantum computing technology it is developing with academic researchers. Naeem Talukdar, CEO Moonvalley AI, explains the fascinating quest he and his colleagues, many veterans of Deepmind and OpenAI, seek to build a video model that can supercharge CGI high-definition video pipelines for the film industry. Moonvalley is in the process of refining their model with sister company Aesteria Studios, for release in the next few months. Aesteria is led by Bryn Mooser, founder of RYOT (sold to Verizon) and streaming service XTR. They helped source the licensed video content the Moonvalley AI model is trained on, and are developing advanced workflows for its use. Thank you to our sponsor, Zappar!Don't forget to like, share, and follow for more! Follow us on all socials @ThisWeekInXR!https://linktr.ee/thisweekinxrHosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
  • The AI/XR Podcast February 14th, 2025 ft. Ann Hand, CEO Super League

    52:42|
    Our guest this week is Ann Hand, CEO of Super League, a brand agency specializing in game platforms like Roblox and Fortnite. The news this week starts with an ironic twist: first people who are losing jobs to AI are people who work in tech. Also, tech's super bowl commercials barely made a sound. Super League started as a platform for eSports marketing but Ann Hand has guided it to become one of the leading brand marketers in spatial computing, otherwise referred to as The Metaverse. Users are spending more and more of their time on these platforms. The company recently announced it was being acquired by Infinite Reality, which has raised over $3 Billion, Thank you to our sponsor, Zappar!Don't forget to like, share, and follow for more! Follow us on all socials @ThisWeekInXR!https://linktr.ee/thisweekinxr
  • The AI/XR Podcast February 7th, 2025 ft. Sean Mann, CEO RP1

    49:41|
    Charlie, Ted, and Rony welcome Sean Mann, CEO of RP1, whose Metaverse browser can support hundreds of thousands of unique users in a spatial environment. It's earning week in the tech world and the outlook for 2025, after two years of hypergrowth, is downright conservative. Love for Meta's money printing machine continued, despite continued losses on its Metaverse ambitions. Apple's discontinuing AR glasses. Or are they? And Alexa is back. Using RP1's browser, users can share spatial environments, including 1:1 maps of the physical world, on any browser, including VR. Charlie says the MR demo of RP1 that he showed him on Thursday was the most like the mixed reality described in "Snow Crash" he has ever seen. Thank you to our sponsor, Zappar!Don't forget to like, share, and follow for more! Follow us on all socials @ThisWeekInXR!https://linktr.ee/thisweekinxr
  • The AI/XR Podcast January 31st, 2025

    37:01|
    Charlie, Rony & Ted are guestless today. It happens. It was a busy news week. First up, Deepseek. Their model may have been trained on OpenAI. Stealing from the thieves, he called it. Big financing deals we announced this week: Softbank is investing $500 M in Skild Robotics, and Eleven Labs (AI Voices) raised $250 M. Marcus Brownlee takes the new Samsung MR headset for a test drive on YouTube. The copyright office released guidance for AI generated content, offering it protection under the law provided a human is using AI as a tool, not an author. The Gulf of Mexico will be renamed on Google Maps. What about New Mexico? Thank you to our sponsor, Zappar!Don't forget to like, share, and follow for more! Follow us on all socials @ThisWeekInXR!https://linktr.ee/thisweekinxr
  • The AI/XR Podcast January 24th, 2025 ft. Elizabeth Baron, Senior Advisor, Intelligent Immersive Simulation, UNMC iEXCEL

    49:21|
    Charlie and Ted welcome Elizabeth Baron, who at Ford Motor Company led Immersive Simulation for Product Development, where she combined design, engineering and manufacturing digital twins together for a holistic review of vehicles. She then moved to the University of Nebraska iEXCEL, where she is leading Intelligent Immersive Simulation to bring AI-based Digital Twins into healthcare. It was a big news week as Trump was inaugurated and had tech on his mind. TikTok got a temporary reprieve, and earned the company's thanks. Trump introduced a $500 B data center deal with OpenAI's Sam Altman, Oracle's Larry Ellison, and Softbank's Mayoshi Son, and they expressed their admiration and gratitude. Not present: Elon Musk and Microsoft. Google buys HTC Vive. Sort of. Elizabeth, is Founder, Immersionary Enterprises, LLC, as well as Senior Advisor, Intelligent Immersive Simulation, UNMC iEXCEL. Formerly Global Lead,  Immersive Reality for Ford Motor Company Product Development. She joined us for an in-depth look at Ford automotive simulation and how the University of Nebraska Medical Center at iEXCEL is teaching, performing research and allowing interdisciplinary collaboration within its med school using simulation, AI and XR.Thank you to our sponsor, Zappar!Don't forget to like, share, and follow for more! Follow us on all socials @ThisWeekInXR!https://linktr.ee/thisweekinxr
  • The AI/XR Podcast January 17th, 2025 ft. Ashley Crowder, CEO Vntana

    53:27|
    This week the hosts welcome Ashley Crowder, CEO of Vntana, which manages CAD drawings and other 3D assets for companies in industries as diverse as fashion and concrete. The news segment was focused on the imminent shut down of TikTok, and rumors Elon will announce a deal to buy the platform before the deadline Sunday night. Biden mentioned tech oligarchs in his farewell address to the nation, and we talk about them, too. Ashley's company has been around twelve years, first focused on consumer marketing and live events before pivoting to solving companies' problems managing and distributing their 3D content. Ashely is also a pioneering female founder, of which there are still precious few today. Thank you to our sponsor, Zappar!Don't forget to like, share, and follow for more! Follow us on all socials @ThisWeekInXR!https://linktr.ee/thisweekinxr
  • The AI/XR Podcast January 10th, 2025 ft. Dean Takahasi, Lead writer for VentureBeat and GamesBeat

    59:23|
    This week our guest is esteemed journalist Dean Takahasi, dean of tech writers, who helps us analyze this year's CES. News topics on our minds were the LA fires, which have personally affected Charlie and Ted, Meta's big announcement on content moderation, free speech, and Jensen Huang's Nvidia keynote, which promised a new AI-capable personal computer on the edge, and their plans to power a robotics revolution worth trillions. Charlie and Ted found CES a bit disappointing, especially the XR area, which was dominated by Xreal. Meta was also there for the first time, promoting Ray Bans and their MR Quest 3 headset. Thank you to our sponsor, Zappar!Don't forget to like, share, and follow for more! Follow us on all socials @ThisWeekInXR!https://linktr.ee/thisweekinxr
  • The AI/XR Podcast January 3rd, 2025 ft. Gary Shapiro, CEO of CES

    53:47|
    Charlie, Ted, and Rony have a wide-ranging preview of CES 2025 and what to expect from the coming year from Gary Shapiro, CEO of the Consumer Technology Association which owns CES. To be sure, we'll be seeing a lot more AI in everything. Mobility, robotics, drones, wearables and healthtech are going to have a strong presence this year as well. Gary has a new book, Pivot or Die, which takes a look at the boom in productivity that companies are going to experience with AI. He is optimistic about the potential for the new administration to create a business environment with reduced regulation and greater freedom to pursue M&A, which will stimulate venture investments in new technologies. This, Gary says, does not mean no regulation, it means the right kind of regulation.Thank you to our sponsor, Zappar!Don't forget to like, share, and follow for more! Follow us on all socials @ThisWeekInXR!https://linktr.ee/thisweekinxr
  • This Week In XR December 20th, 2024 ft. Shelly Palmer, CEO of the Palmer Group

    54:45|
    Charlie, Rony, and Ted are out in full force to greet the world's foremost tech consultant and professor Shelly Palmer, CEO of the Palmer Group. We hit the news quickly, Perplexity raises $500M at a $9B valuation, ChatGPT under assault, AI's coming "clean." Our wide ranging conversation with Shelley was focused on some important trends in AI and XR, and especially the long process of integrating AI into company workflow. It's going to take time and training, perhaps more than five years for that to be happy, Shelly said. Other 2024 events we looked back on: the ongoing AI revolution, the crypto run up, agentic AI, the possible TikTok ban, AI & XR, and the end of the media business as we know it. Audiences are on different screens doing different things. The implications are staggering. It decided the election.  Thank you to our sponsor, Zappar!Don't forget to like, share, and follow for more! Follow us on all socials @ThisWeekInXR!https://linktr.ee/thisweekinxr