The AI XR Podcast had a massive news week and one of its best guest conversations of the year. Caspar Thykier and Connell Gauld, CEO and CTO co-founders of Zappar, joined Charlie Fink and Ted Schilowitz to talk about something deceptively simple: helping people find stuff.

Zappar's new product, Spaces, is app-free indoor navigation built on the web. QR code or link in a meeting invite — your phone shows AR breadcrumbs to the nearest restroom, the right meeting room, the hospital ward three floors away. No app download. No specific hardware. No Azure dependency. Caspar put the pitch simply: it's fundamentally just helping people find stuff. Connell's vision: the same technology running in glasses indistinguishable from a regular pair, within four to five years.

AI XR News: Elon Musk's $135 billion lawsuit against OpenAI went to trial in Berkeley. OpenAI's IPO may be pushed to 2027 over its CFO reporting structure and $600B CapEx problem. Meta is laying off 20% of its staff in two waves. Google earnings were up 10% while Meta got punished. Freepik rebranded as Magnifi with $230M ARR and a million paid subscribers. Samsung announced displayless AI smart glasses. Google partnered with Gucci for another AI glasses play. And Google put $40 billion into Anthropic.

Key Moments:

• [00:03:02] Elon vs. Sam: the $135 billion trial
• [00:05:09] OpenAI's IPO in jeopardy — CFO structure and $600B CapEx
• [00:07:12] Meta's 20% layoffs and Charlie's read on bad CEO behavior
• [00:10:32] Freepik becomes Magnifi: $230M ARR, a million subscribers
• [00:13:10] Samsung Galaxy XR and Google x Gucci smart glasses
• [00:15:15] Google puts $40B into Anthropic — a cloud play
• [00:21:06] Spaces: turn-by-turn AR indoor navigation, no app required
• [00:41:13] 16 years in XR: how Zappar survived by being the cockroach

Brought to you by Zappar, the company behind Mattercraft — the leading visual development environment for immersive 3D web experiences.

Start building at mattercraft.io.

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Akash Nigam has been building Genies since 2017 with a conviction that avatars will be the visual layer of the internet. As CEO of Genies, he's assembled IP partners including the NBA, MLB, Sanrio, and Kakao, with more major studios and agencies set to announce before the end of May. The pitch: every app, game, website, and celebrity is going to have an AI personality. Genies wants to be the framework that gives all of those personalities a face.

What separates Genies is portability and scale. A character that took eight weeks in 2021 now takes ten minutes. Staying stylized rather than photorealistic isn't just aesthetic — it's what got Hollywood to the table. Talent doesn't want deepfakes. They want a Genie: trained on private IP data, capable of one-on-one fan relationships that make Instagram feel thin.

AI XR News: Tim Cook stepped aside as Apple CEO with hardware chief John Ternus taking over. Humanoid robots ran a half marathon in Beijing while a Sony robot defeated professional table tennis players, opening a conversation about Chinese robotics capabilities and AI data infiltration risks the US is still underestimating.

Key Moments:

• [00:06:45] Tim Cook steps aside: what the Apple leadership transition signals about wearable AI
• [00:12:00] Humanoid robots and table tennis: China's robotics flex
• [00:13:00] The data infiltration argument: open-source risk and a warning for the US
• [00:24:00] The IP land grab: NBA, MLB, Sanrio, Kakao, Naver Webtoon
• [00:28:00] From photo to avatar in 10 minutes: how Genies' generation pipeline scaled
• [00:32:00] Why Instagram feels thin and how Genies enables one-on-one fan relationships
• [00:49:00] 80 people, $150M raised, and why Bob Iger sees Genies as the future of Disney

If AI personalities are going to be everywhere, what do they look like? Akash has been building the answer for nearly a decade. Q3 is when it goes live.

Brought to you by Zappar and Mattercraft — the leading visual development environment for immersive 3D web experiences. Mattercraft now includes an AI assistant for design, code, and debugging in real time.

Start building at mattercraft.io.

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Alan Lasky arrived at the AI XR Podcast straight from Las Vegas ahead of NAB. An MIT Media Lab graduate under Nicholas Negroponte, a veteran of Silicon Graphics and Amazon Web Services, and an advisor to investment banks on AI and media, he brings technical depth, industry history, and financial realism about where media is actually going.

The conversation covers Hollywood's structural collapse, AI's role in the production renaissance, and the harder question of why trillion-dollar tech companies keep buying media businesses that can't generate comparable returns.

Alan's answer: soft power. Amazon makes $950 million Lord of the Rings spinoffs so you order more paper towels. Apple is making Neuromancer. His five-year weighted moving average of Disney stock — flat from 2018 — makes the argument clean.

AI XR News You Should Know: Artemis ignited a new space boom. Amazon acquired Global Star satellite to build Project Kuiper, a direct Starlink competitor. Apple's AI audio smart glasses are reportedly arriving this year per Mark Gurman at Bloomberg, entering a market where Meta owns the optometrist channel and Google is moving through Warby Parker. Snap laid off 15% while doubling down on the 2026 launch of Spectacles — the first see-through headset since Magic Leap.

Key Moments:

• [00:04:48] – Artemis and the space boom: Ted on filming shuttle launches and why the crew's accomplishment is underestimated.
• [00:08:33] – Apple AI audio glasses: Rony's read from former Magic Leapers who designed them — if Apple gets this wrong, it's unforgivable.
• [00:12:00] – Snap's layoffs and the see-through gamble: can they compete with cheap AI audio glasses flooding the market?
• [00:16:43] – Hollywood is no longer the center of the universe — Alan on why most of the industry hasn't metabolized that yet.
• [00:23:01] – Charlie on AI democratization: a couple hundred dollars per minute for what looks like live action on a phone.
• [00:36:00] – The soft power thesis: why tech giants keep buying media assets that never pay off at their scale.
• [00:41:30] – Should Apple buy Disney? Charlie says Meta will do it first. Rony's reaction is immediate and visceral.
• [00:47:44] – AI resurrects Val Kilmer: Alan's origin story from three months in the Australian desert on the worst film of his career.

Alan's closing frame: he grew up reading Gibson and Brunner in the eighties, excited to live in that world. He's in it. He's not sure he wanted it this way.

This episode is sponsored by Zappar and Mattercraft — the leading visual development environment for immersive 3D web experiences, now with AI-assisted design and debug. Build at mattercraft.io.

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