The AI XR Podcast.

Charlie, Ted, and Rony open on Higgsfield's $400 million raise at a $5.4 billion valuation, and the uncomfortable gap between its strong revenue and a wave of user complaints about its terms of service (Charlie discloses he's a Higgsfield creative partner). From there: Snap's $2,195 Specs launch on September 16th, and Evan Spiegel's candid admission that he doesn't expect them to sell well, which Rony compares to Jensen Huang's decade-plus of staying the course before Nvidia's breakout. The group also digs into Epic Games quietly offloading Sketchfab and ArtStation to the much smaller KitBash, and a wide-ranging debate on AI filmmaking sparked by a Chatham House Rules event with Google and the American Film Institute, including Rony's memorable comparison of AI-native filmmakers to Skrillex versus the full-orchestra, Abbey-Road approach of traditional Hollywood.

Barmak Heshmat, founder and CEO of Brelyon, joins to make the case for immersive displays that skip the headset entirely. A former head of optics at the AR company Meta (not Facebook) and MIT computational imaging researcher, Barmak explains Brelyon's curved monitor, which uses monocular depth to create what he calls "a window to the virtual world" you look through rather than wear. The conversation covers why enterprise, not consumer, is where the technology is scaling first, a published study with Toyota on video pass-through windshields that could eliminate car glass entirely, and Barmak's longer-term vision for light field displays as the natural evolution beyond stereoscopic 3D.

Key Moments:
[03:35] Higgsfield's $400M raise and the backlash over its terms of service
[07:35] Snap's $2,195 Specs and the Jensen Huang long-game comparison
[11:35] Epic Games sheds Sketchfab and ArtStation to KitBash
[17:35] Inside a Chatham House Rules AI filmmaking summit with Google and AFI
[21:35] The Skrillex vs. Beatles theory of AI-native filmmaking
[28:35] Barmak Heshmat joins to tell us about building the Brelyon's headset-less display
[33:35] How monocular depth creates a "window to the virtual world"
[46:35] A published study with Toyota on video pass-through windshields
[53:35] The future: light field displays and headsets as an accessory
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Charlie, Ted, and Rony open on Mark Zuckerberg's new AI "manifesto," released, fittingly, via a call to The Verge's Alex Heath made from Meta Ray-Bans on a fishing boat. The group debates whether Zuckerberg's sudden embrace of open, on-device AI is a genuine philosophy or a business move from a company that can no longer out-build its rivals. From there: OpenAI and Google both cross a billion users, OpenAI's new strategy of acquiring companies outright (via its partner Thrive) to guarantee AI adoption rather than sell into it, and the eye-watering $2 billion price tag on an 80-person AI infrastructure startup.

Mark Greget, founder and CEO of NuEyes, joins for the back half to make the case that enterprise, not consumer, is where smart glasses are proving their worth right now. Mark walks through a decade of building visualization tools for surgeons, from early low-vision devices to NuEyes' current surgical system, which one doctor used to cut a 10-plus hour procedure down to three. The conversation digs into the real ROI math hospitals run on OR time, why clinical outcomes (not consumer hype) are what get insurance companies to pay attention, and why Mark is staying heads-down on five surgical specialties instead of chasing every use case.

Key Moments:
[00:35] Zuckerberg's AI manifesto and the strategy behind it
[07:05] OpenAI and Google cross a billion users
[09:05] OpenAI's Thrive strategy: buying companies to guarantee AI adoption
[11:05] The $2 billion AI infrastructure acquisition
[16:05] Mark Greget joins to tell us what NuEyes has been up to over the last decade
[43:35] The ROI math: what OR time is actually worth
[45:35] From "nice to have" to critical path in the operating room

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Charlie, Ted, and Rony open with the White House's decision to keep its "voluntary" AI safety framework secret, despite it being co-written with the same companies it's meant to evaluate. The conversation turns into a real debate about why Congress has stepped back from its constitutional role in regulating AI, and whether that changes after November. From there: the EU's AI Act goes live with mandatory content labeling, OpenAI's frontier models jumping their sandbox to vandalize Hugging Face, and Disney's new deal letting TikTok creators remix its IP, following the collapse of its similar arrangement with OpenAI's Sora.

Cortney Harding, founder of Friends With Holograms, joins for a wide-ranging back half. She makes the case that the backlash against Meta's camera-equipped smart glasses is disproportionate to any actual harm, and connects it to a broader "vibes are bad" moment in tech sentiment tied to layoffs and a shaky economy. The group digs into Snap's upcoming $2,500 Specs launch, why enterprise (not consumer) is the more realistic path for smart glasses right now, and Rony's long-view bet that XR has an "Nvidia moment" coming once the supply chain catches up. They close on AI's effect on jobs, UBI, and whether the social contract between tech companies and workers is already broken.

Key Moments:
[01:35] AI regulation news and the fight over Congress's role
[09:35] EU AI Act goes live, plus AI models breaching their own sandboxes
[13:35] Disney's TikTok deal and the fan-content strategy behind it
[17:35] Cortney Harding joins and doesn't miss a beat
[24:35] UBI, the broken social contract, and AI's effect on jobs
[41:35] Snap's $2,500 Specs and the case for enterprise over consumer
[52:35] Rony's prediction: XR's coming "Nvidia moment"

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Mark Drummond spent his Apple years building the character intelligence team behind Apple Vision Pro, working with Marvel and Jon Favreau to figure out how Hollywood IP could come to life in AR. Now, at his startup Pixi, he's making the opposite bet: forget the headset, the iPhone is the better device for bringing characters into people's lives. Mark walks Charlie and Ted through Pixi's vision — send a licensed character like Elsa to sing happy birthday through iMessage, no app required — and the underlying tech that makes it possible, including an engine built with Claude that replaced Unreal and cut compile times from an hour to seven minutes. The conversation goes deep on the Apple Vision Pro's real tradeoffs, the neurobiology of why the headset can feel exhausting after an hour, and why Mark thinks Apple's rumored "spectacles" will quietly inherit lessons from AVP's failures.

The news segment covers a big week of Big Tech earnings — Microsoft and Amazon soaring on cloud and ad growth, Meta and Apple taking hits — plus Anthropic's disclosure that its frontier AI models were used in real-world hacks, an AI-run vending machine experiment that lied to customers about refunds, the new ban on Chinese humanoid robot imports, and the growing backlash against AI smart glasses with outward-facing cameras.

Key Moments:
[01:35] Big Tech earnings and market winners/losers
[06:35] AI models behind real-world hacks
[09:35] Smart glasses and the "Glasshole" effect
[17:35] Mark Drummond joins — Pixi's origin story
[24:35] Apple Vision Pro history — what went wrong
[41:35] Headset vs. phone: the case for AR on iPhone
[50:35] Funding, protections, and the CDE philosophy

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This week marks five years and 300 episodes of coffee-fueled tech talk — and the news didn't slow down to celebrate. An autonomous OpenAI agent broke out of its sandbox and hacked Hugging Face, only to be denied help by rival AI labs' safety guardrails. The hosts dig into whether "dangerous AI" has become a marketing flex, unpack China's new Kimi 3 model and the double standard around AI data sovereignty, and debate whether Cosm's $300 immersive Matrix experience is proof of a widening wealth gap.

Then Katie Jacobs Stanton, GM of Moxie VC and veteran of Google, Twitter, and Yahoo, joins Charlie, Ted, and Rony for a wide-ranging conversation on the convergence of tech and governance — why Silicon Valley's "techno-autocrat" cohort is losing faith in democracy, what national service could do to rebuild common ground, and why she's most optimistic about AI's next chapter: biology and healthcare. Oh, and there may or may not be a Mark Cuban 2028 campaign launched live on air.

Timestamps:

00:00 — Celebrating 5 years and episode 300
00:02 — OpenAI's rogue agent breaks out and hacks Hugging Face
00:03 — Is "dangerous AI" a marketing stunt?
00:04 — China's Kimi 3 and the AI data double standard
00:06 — Cosm's immersive Matrix experience
00:07 — A $300 date night and the widening wealth gap
00:09 — Wealth inequality stats and political extremism
00:12 — Samsung's foldables vs. Apple's next move
00:15 — Katie Jacobs Stanton joins the show
00:16 — Her path through Google, Twitter, and Yahoo
00:18 — What made Google outpace Yahoo
00:22 — Why trust matters more than innovation
00:25 — Inside the Obama administration's digital push
00:29 — Making public service accessible again
00:31 — Finding a shared American identity beyond party lines
00:34 — National service, the draft, and common ground
00:37 — Tech and governance converging
00:40 — Silicon Valley's techno-autocrats and democracy
00:44 — The case for Mark Cuban
00:46 — Launching "Mark Cuban 2028" live on air
00:47 — Katie's big-picture take: AI, healthcare, and optimism

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