Metaverse Digest: A look at Augmented World Expo, Snap updates Lens Studio

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The 16th Augmented World Expo, which took place in June 2025 at its new home in Long Beach, Calif., saw more than 5,000 attendees, 250 exhibitors and 450 speakers, including S&P Global Inc. It created Gaming Hub, Builders Nexus and Enterprise VIP Experience to cater to the diverse set of use cases across the extended reality industry. With more than 80 new product announcements, this report aims to show the breadth of the extended reality industry across many sectors.

The AWE show acts as a major hub for many companies to showcase their new products to a willing and interested extended reality (XR) community. This year saw a mix of industrial corporations and Silicon Valley companies, haptics devices, lens makers, artists, educators, and healthcare. AI is in the mix now, too. In 2024, we reported that augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) hardware was making its case as an ideal platform for generative AI, and this continues to be the case. Adoption of XR and the wider metaverse is slowly happening, changing interfaces and interactions everywhere.

Event roundup

As ever, AWE began with co-founder Ori Inbar giving his take on the state of the XR/spatial/metaverse industry. His message, much like in 2024 but with more emphasis, was that everything has matured enough for wider acceptance and take-up in industry and consumer spaces to be inevitable. He focused on the importance of collaboration between AI and XR for driving innovation.

Snap Inc. CEO and co-founder Evan Spiegel announced new updates to Snap's AR developer platform, Lens Studio, introducing a desktop version and smartphone app to create many different AR effects and publish them to Snap's ecosystem. The company also revealed its latest consumer-ready AR glasses, Specs, which will run its new Snap OS, due in 2026.

Niantic Spatial, in partnership with Snap, announced a strategic multiyear project to build a next-generation AI-powered map as a foundation for AR glasses and AI agents, based on Niantic's Visual Positioning System (VPS). This announcement included Snap's investment of capital into Niantic Spatial. The company also announced a partnership with the Singapore Tourism Board to create the Garden of Wonder, an AR experience at Gardens by the Bay, leveraging Magic Leap to create an interactive botanical adventure.

QUALCOMM Inc. showcased XR demonstrations in areas including entertainment, education and fitness. In a keynote, the company announced Snapdragon AR1+ Gen 1 and its approach to enabling stand-alone AI glasses with powerful on-device processing.

Sony Electronics Inc. launched Sony XYN as a brand earlier this year and demonstrated its portfolio at AWE. The unit included hardware and software aimed at capturing and representing 3D computer-generated content and integrating with existing workflows in film, animation, games and industrial design. This included XYN Motion Studio, used to edit motion capture from its mocopi devices attached to a performer, as well as Spatial Reality Display, which provides a glasses-free desktop screen for 3D spatial reality.

Siemens AG presented its partnership with Sony to create an integrated XR solution for engineering. It calls this approach immersive engineering, offering seamless workflow integration that enables designers to work naturally with their computer-aided design (CAD) systems and make real-time changes in both 2D CAD and immersive environments. The company shared how Briggs Automotive, based in the UK, uses Siemens immersive engineering for its highly customized single-seater sports cars via three distinct use cases: designers having access to digital twins of parts before fabrication, customers experiencing their customized cars in XR, and connecting non-3D CAD operators to the design process earlier to minimize errors and reduce costs.

Samsung Display Co., Ltd. debuted at AWE 2025, showcasing its flagship 1.4-inch RGB OLEDoS panel for XR, which has 5,000 pixels per inch — three times the number of pixels found in a 4K TV.

XREAL Inc. shared details of Project Aura, smart glasses based on Android XR and tethered to a Qualcomm Snapdragon chip that boasts a 70-degree field of view compared to 57 degrees for its XReal One. It also showed XREAL Eye, a camera attachment for its XREAL One Series AR glasses that provides six degrees of freedom (6DOF) tracking for spatial awareness and gesture tracking. The base models use tethered smartphone movements as a control for a more static AR display.

Creal SA showcased its recently announced Clarity light field display technology designed for AR glasses. Light field displays work by replicating light as it would appear in the physical world, allowing focal changes by the user's eyes, rather than flat projection surfaces that force convergence and divergence of the eyes.

Kopin Corp. brought its new NeuralDisplay technology, which is available as a physical prototype for AR/XR solutions in consumer, medical and defense applications. These displays utilize in-device sensors to better track and adapt to changes in the user's eyes, which has typically been done with additional cameras on a headset.

RP1 showcased its Metaverse Browser, which connects users to "limitless 3D content" and real-time services from other providers. It is designed for multi-user online virtual world applications at scale with decentralized hosting, and can enable interconnected environments.

LineZero and Uptale demonstrated mixed reality (MR) and VR enterprise training solutions. Uptale's no-code XR platform is already used in healthcare, energy and automotive. LineZero has been a premier partner for Meta since 2019 and focuses on onboarding as well as scaling and securing rollout of MR/VR applications for enterprise clients.

Convai Technologies Inc. showed a suite of applications based on a new agentic AI architecture. Convai Sim, Avatar Studio and XR Animation Capture are used to create virtual characters with memory and understanding of space and context for virtual learning and simulated environments.

Auki Labs demonstrated the combination of AR and AI in robotics with Cactus, its platform that enhances spatial reasoning for robots and for people. It is already in use in retail chains in the US and Europe.

Teledatica.com BV launched version 2.0 of its virtual meeting platform. Meta Quest-based meetings are held in shared 3D spaces, and the use cases vary from collaborative design to product showcases to remotely engaging with customers and 3D models of products.

ClimbRx launched as an XR platform for neurodivergent children, delivering therapeutic content and a private support network for families and educators. Designed for families and educators, ClimbRx nurtures sensory, emotional and cognitive development.

XRAI unveiled its next-generation captioning glasses. The new model gives real-time subtitles and live translation in more than 220 languages. It will also generate AI-based summaries. The new model has a 7x battery boost over last year's AR One.

Clark Synthesis showed how it creates large-area, impactful haptic feedback for immersive experiences. The company has more than 30 years of experience delivering in theme parks and military use cases.

UDEXREAL unveiled its lightweight and flexible UDCAP VR Gloves and UDCAP Data Gloves. The VR Gloves are a consumer product designed for SteamVR and experiences such as VRChat with full 6DOF hand tracking through custom elastic sensors. The Data Gloves are aimed at professional use cases, such as robotics and teleoperation or VR training in defense and healthcare.

X Reality Safety Intelligence (XRSI) launched the Responsible Data Governance (RDG) standard at AWE, a global framework to reduce data exposure risks in immersive and AI systems. This v1.0 launch covers the full data life cycle and offers certification and transparency metrics.

STYLY Inc. launched its "STYLY World Canvas," which will launch AR applications globally from its STYLY Studio platform. These allow brands to deploy simultaneous location-based activations.

Olorama Technology brings an AR/VR platform with more than 200 real, heat-free fragrances for experiences in retail, gaming, entertainment, museums and events — from the ocean to fresh-baked bread.

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