This Week in XR Podcast

This week it's Ted's turn to be too busy, but Charlie and Rony are in fine form, welcoming Liam Broza, CTO of Infinite Reality. In the news, funding for AI startups big and small, including Magic AI, Story Protocol, Miris, and Gen-AI animation app, Viggle. Liam explains how Infinite Reality is turning the browser into a metaverse streaming platform. 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 we're joined by Ryan Chapman, CEO of Motive, focused on business applications of VR. We start with the state of the entertainment business, where Charlie throws around wildly inaccurate numbers to make the point that the music has stopped for the television networks and cable channels like MTV, which are about to be chopped up and sold for parts as they continue to hemorrhage viewers to Roblox, Fortnite, and TikTok. New AR glasses are coming from Meta and Snap next month. Oh, and there's not going to be a GTA VR game [cue: loud applause]. Ryan Chapman, CEO of Motive, breaks down their unique approach to developing VR applications for training workers. 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 the three hosts are here in full force as Rony returns from vacation. Now that a federal judge ruled that Google is a monopolist, the question is what to do about it. Forbidding them from buying distribution is one thing, but now people are talking about forcing them to spin off their browser business. Speaking of Google, they've released new AI image generators, and they are quite good and totally free. Grok-2 is now available for X premium subscribers. It can also generate images. Starlink competitor AST is taking flight - on SpaceX. The other Groq (with a "q") is a semiconductor startup that raised $640M series D. Chips are expensive, but everyone is eyeing Nvidia's market share. This week our guest is Akash Nigam, CEO of Genies, which is focused on Avatars, which he sees as the full expression of AI and the Metaverse.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

Google's guilty of monopoly practices, but the result will be unclear for some time. Elon Musk continues to go bonkers while raking in trillions, nonetheless, he is suing people who don't like him, like former advertisers and others unhappy with the lack of moderation on their platform. Meta shuttered Echo Arena, and now they're shuttering the studio that makes it, Ready at Dawn, which they acquired in 2020. Our guest is Val Vacante, VP of Solutions Innovation for Dentsu Advertising. She is based in Austin and advises the SXSW festival on programming. Val shares Dentsu's innovative approaches to problematic categories like retail, where many companies are in desperate need of reinvention. 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 our guest is neuroscientist Dr. Cody Rall. Rony's working his super-secret day job (an AI startup). Top of the news is OpenAI's Search GPT, which is now a close beta (you can sign up); AI start-up Cohere valued at $5.5 B in their latest round. There are more than 20 AI unicorns - startups valued at more than $1B. Elon Musk has a supercomputer cluster in Memphis, and no idea (yet) where the power is coming from. Meta is in the news (constantly). This week their biggie is the release of powerful open source Llama 3.1 AI LLM. Both Reality Labs and Magic Leap saw layoffs. Dr. Rall joins us to talk about psychiatric treatments with BCI, and other methods for healing, and even augment, the brain. 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

Charlie and Rony go Tedless this week with Sarah Nagy, founder and CEO of Seek AI, which brings AI to datasets that can be queried with natural language processing and other AI applications. This week's news includes funding for 3D company Jigspace, whose demos are bundled with Apple Vision Pro and tablets. Artificial Agency raised $16M for AI NPCs, and Haiper AI introduces eight second text-to-video gen-AI. Sarah Nagy is a "quant" and data scientist who founded Seek to help companies extract maximum insight and value from their existing data. 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

Another big news week finds AMD snapping up Silo AI for $655M. Captions lip dub co raises $60M. Odyssey AI out of stealth with hi-res gen-AI. Infinite Reality Raises $350M, Acquires LandVault in stock deal. Apple is launching the Iphone 16 with AI this fall, but Siri won't be out until Spring 2025. Samsung includes Bixby in its new launch. Our guest is Chandra Devam, CEO of Arismd, a ten year old company that created technology for X-Ray vision. 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 the news was all about AI, music labels sue AI music generators Suno and Udio. Etched raises $120M to make AI Chips. Emergence AI scores $97.2M to make AI agents for white-collar work. We share our hot takes on Augmented World Expo, which wrapped last week. Tony, a true XR OG and an old friend, joined Rony in the AWE Hall of Fame last week. We're talking about art, music, copyrights, problems in Hollywood, and the responsibilities (or lack thereof) of American companies. 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