The air at Augmented World Expo (AWE) 2025 felt different. It wasn’t just the usual hum of innovation; there was a palpable sense of an industry poised on the brink, shedding its nascent skin for something far more substantial.
For years, the promise of Extended Reality (XR) has danced just beyond reach, a futuristic vision perpetually “five years away.” This year, however, the refrain was less about distant dreams and more about imminent arrival.
The question on everyone’s lips, tacitly addressed by every keynote and demo, was clear: Is XR finally going mainstream? The answer, at least from the floor of AWE, seems to be a resounding, if cautious, “soon.”
Ori Inbar, AWE’s founder and CEO, set the tone from the outset, kicking off his presentation by playing pool with Snap Spectacles.
It was a playful yet pointed demonstration, signaling a shift from abstract concepts to tangible, user-friendly experiences.
Inbar’s assertion that the industry is emerging from its “startup phase” resonated deeply.
While some observers debated whether attendance numbers truly swelled, the consensus was that the event felt fuller, more mature, with a broader, more integrated presence from major players.
This dispersion, rather than indicating a smaller show, arguably pointed to a maturing ecosystem no longer confined to a single exhibition hall.
At the heart of this unfolding narrative was Qualcomm, a perennial powerhouse in the XR space.
As a Diamond sponsor, their presence was foundational.
Ziad Asghar, General Manager of Qualcomm’s XR division, delivered a compelling keynote on “Accelerating the Spatial Computing Revolution.” His background in AI strategy, a field now inextricably linked with XR, positions him perfectly to steer Qualcomm’s efforts.
Asghar championed the success of their OEM partners, particularly highlighting the Meta Ray-Ban collaboration as a beacon of mainstream acceptance – a product that has quietly, yet effectively, brought smart glasses into everyday life.
The demonstration of a Monster Hunter experience for the Osaka Fair, leveraging custom headsets, further underscored the diverse applications of XR, from entertainment to enterprise.
Qualcomm’s announcement of the AR1+ Gen 1 processor for AI glasses, a smaller, more power-efficient chip designed to reduce temple height by 20%, signals a critical step towards truly wearable, stylish AR.
Coupled with the Kiwear smart ring reference design, offering alternative input methods to voice, these advancements chip away at the practical barriers to mass adoption.
Perhaps the most significant splash came from Snap, a company that, in many ways, pioneered the smart glasses market with its early Spectacles.
Their commitment to shipping new consumer Specs in 2026 – described as lighter, more compact, and more powerful – could re-ignite the AR race.
Snap has long possessed an intuitive understanding of AR’s social potential, and their deep integrations with OpenAI and Gemini for AI-powered Lenses are a testament to this foresight.
The introduction of developer APIs for depth, speech recognition, and 3D, alongside features for fleet management, speaks to Snap’s ambition for both consumer and larger-scale deployments.
Crucially, their partnership with Niantic Spatial to integrate the Visual Positioning System (VPS) into Lens Studio promises world-scale AR experiences with unprecedented location accuracy – a vital ingredient for truly immersive augmented realities.
XREAL, another key player, showcased its momentum with the One Pro AR glasses, featuring a wider field of view and significantly thinner optics.
Despite facing launch delays, the company’s efforts to improve the user experience and expand into enterprise applications are commendable.
The tantalizing glimpse of Project Aura, co-developed with Google and powered by Android XR, promises an even wider 70-degree FoV and a faster X1S chip – a device slated for a 2026 launch that could serve as a vital reference for the burgeoning Android XR ecosystem.
The focus on enterprise, exemplified by collaborations with Sightful for AR-powered workspaces, illustrates the dual-track approach many in XR are taking: building consumer appeal while securing foundational business use cases.
Niantic Spatial, often overshadowed by its gaming past, emerged as a silent giant.
CTO Brian McClendon articulated a vision centered on enabling machines and people to understand and interact with the real world.
Their platform, enriched by acquisitions like Scaniverse and 8thWall, delivers stunningly photorealistic digital twins and boasts a colossal Large Geospatial Model with 1.4 million VPS-activated locations.
This geospatial intelligence, the bedrock of truly contextual AR, is what will make augmented experiences genuinely useful.
Niantic’s push for WebXR support and partnerships, like that with Snap and Meow Wolf, underscores a commitment to cross-platform experiences and widespread developer adoption – critical for mainstream XR.
Google, for its part, is finally making its intentions clear with Android XR.
Project Moohan, developed in partnership with Qualcomm and Samsung, represents their concerted effort to create a robust operating system for AR devices.
The embrace of Unity, OpenXR, and the existing Android ecosystem is a smart move to attract developers.
However, the clock is ticking; Google must accelerate its rollout to capture the attention of developers who might otherwise gravitate towards Apple or Meta’s established platforms.
Even the military is getting in on the act, with Palmer Luckey’s Anduril taking over Microsoft’s IVAS contract.
Renamed Soldier-Borne Mission Command, the project, dubbed Eagle Eye, promises high-resolution headsets with significant local compute, a testament to the versatility and power of XR beyond consumer entertainment.
While Meta’s physical presence at AWE was more subdued this year, its influence was undeniable.
The ubiquitous Meta Ray-Bans served as a constant reminder of a product that has genuinely broken through, proving that smart glasses can be both desirable and functional.
The recent launch of Meta Oakley glasses with improved video and battery life further solidifies their position.
The prevailing sentiment at AWE 2025 was one of collective anticipation.
The pieces are falling into place: smaller, more powerful chips; refined optics; robust spatial computing platforms; and a growing ecosystem of content and applications.
The delays that plagued the industry in recent years appear to be resolving, paving the way for a “big” year in 2026, when consumer-focused products from Snap, Meta, and XREAL are expected to hit the market.
While the road to truly widespread adoption remains long – particularly in fostering a vibrant developer community across diverse hardware platforms – the momentum is undeniable.
XR, once a distant promise, feels closer than ever to becoming an integrated part of our daily lives, transforming how we see and interact with the world around us.
G7 nations are committing $8 trillion to military expansion, creating a surge in demand for critical minerals that mirrors the growth of the artificial intelligence sector.
Engineers must weigh the streamlined efficiency of Apple hardware against the specialized, distributed power of Nvidia systems for local AI workloads.
Kinshuk Gulshanrai Sharma’s work scaling semiconductor interconnects to 400G and beyond sits at the point where digital logic meets the unforgiving physics of analog signal degradation—where PAM4 margins are so tight that undetected bit flips can poison an AI model’s math and cause hallucinations rather than obvious crashes. His validation philosophy has shifted accordingly: the goal is no longer testing hardware against a known workload, but testing its capacity for extreme adaptation, because at this scale the lab environment itself can become the source of false readings.
