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.

• 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?

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Paul Raphaël , co-founder of Felix & Paul Studios, joins the AI XR Podcast for a candid, high-energy discussion on the state and future of immersive experiences. Broadcasting live from Las Vegas during the launch of "Interstellar Arc" at AREA15, Raphael details the three-year journey behind this ambitious location-based VR attraction—capable of hosting 170 simultaneous users in a fully interactive, physically-anchored world.

Paul explains how Felix & Paul’s background in cinematic VR, including their Emmy-winning "Space Explorers" ISS series, led organically to massive real-world installations like The Infinite and Interstellar Arc. The team’s relentless commitment to high presence, practical haptics, and social immersion has kept Felix & Paul at the top of XR content for over a decade. Raphael shares the lessons learned from surviving through hardware hype cycles, pivoting when needed, and betting big on experiential location-based entertainment. He compares the Interstellar Arc’s staged onboarding and world-building to the best of Disney Imagineering, blending nostalgia with cutting-edge tech.

The group unpacks the mixed reviews for Samsung’s Galaxy XR headset, discusses OpenAI and Microsoft’s latest browser moves, and debates the implications of California’s new chatbot disclosure law. Paul and the hosts dig deep on business realities—headset costs, throughput limitations, and why word-of-mouth and “the ultimate holodeck” matter more than the marketing hype. Raphael offers advice for young creators: stay obsessed, be nimble, and design for what’s actually possible today—not just hype for the future.

• Launching “Interstellar Arc” at AREA15: 170-player free-roam VR set in a massive, tactile spaceport—blending real-world physicality, seamless pre-show and post-show narrative, and next-gen social VR.
• Lessons from “The Infinite” and Space Explorers: Pivoting toward large-scale, high-throughput live VR events as a sustainable creative and business model.
• Staying power in XR: Why creative obsession, no-plan-B persistence, and ground-level adaptability have kept Felix & Paul thriving.
• Haptics, real objects, and social immersion: Making “free-roam” a convincing, embodied experience—even with today’s hardware.
• XR’s future: Why the studio’s best projects might be ahead—and how true mixed reality will need to drive down headset weight, friction, and heat.

• Amazon’s leaked internal AI & robotics roadmap
• Meta reorgs AI staff
• Samsung launches Galaxy XR headset
• OpenAI and Microsoft debut AI browsers
• California passes first US chatbot law
• Wikipedia sees 8% drop in traffic

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Antony “Skarred Ghost” Vitillo—legendary XR blogger, developer, and authentic voice of the immersive tech world—joins Charlie Fink, Ted Schilowitz, and Rony Abovitz for a sharp, candid take on why spatial computing keeps breaking hearts (and bank accounts).

Vitillo, calling in from Torino (and Nutella country), takes listeners inside his evolution from reluctant Twitter handle-user to one of the industry’s essential critical thinkers. With 30,000+ social followers and nearly a decade at the helm of the Skarred Ghost blog, Tony has borne witness to every device cycle, product hype wave, and reality check XR can muster.

The hosts open with news that captures the collective whiplash of the sector: Samsung finally names its long-awaited “Moohan” headset the Galaxy XR; Apple is reportedly pivoting away from Vision Pro follow-ups in favor of pursuing AI smart glasses, chasing the hardware trend Meta has tried to lead—with several Magic Leap alumni shaping both companies’ next moves. Meanwhile, OpenAI’s Sora 2 outpaces Google’s Veo 3 in text-to-video generation, and “AI feeds” continue to spark debates about separating synthetic from real in our content streams.

Vitillo unveils XR truths learned the hard way:

• From accidental blogger to “Master Yoda”: Tony’s accidental rise began with an anonymous Twitter handle, a failed AR/VR startup, and a mentor’s advice to “own” XR expertise—eventually outlasting the startup itself.
• The real cost of authenticity: European sensibilities (practical, cost-effective, resistant to Silicon Valley bombast) shaped Tony’s on-the-ground verdicts: the Google Glass era was “too early,” even good implementations often wither outside logistics and niche use-cases.
• Product vs. Prototype and the patience gap: Tony, Rony, and Ted all agree: too many XR launches are rushed by investor pressure from prototype to product, skipping the long, hard path of patience. Meta’s Quest Pro is called out as a textbook “rush job” that failed to meet real readiness.
• Why XR is “harder than Mars:” Decades and $150B+ spent, yet still no universal hit. Tony argues the impossible form factor challenge (stuffing room-scale computation into eyewear) is compounded by deeper neuroscience—humans simply recoil from something too “in your face.” Physics is tough, but brains and social norms are the real brick wall.
• Why Roblox, not VRChat, “won” the metaverse: Most of the sector’s big dreams faded back to mobile during and after Covid. With Rec Room, VRChat, and others all scaling back, Roblox’s mass adoption proves device accessibility outweighs idealism. Tony expects cycles of platform hype, but says only rare combinations of luck, timing, and use-case ever sustain an audience.

• Samsung’s “Moohan” headset renamed Galaxy XR—signaling mainstream branding push into the AR/VR hardware race.
• Apple shifts Vision Pro focus toward AI smart glasses—pivot after slow sales and sector criticism, echoing Meta’s latest headset push.
• OpenAI Sora 2 outpaces Google’s Veo 3—AI video generation heats up, new feeds spark debates over AI vs. real content in social media.
• XR product launches called out for impatience—Meta’s Quest Pro and others critiqued as rushed from prototype to product.

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