Google and Snap push XR mainstream with Android XR and $3B Spectacles bet

Augmented World Expo 2025 concluded in Long Beach, California, with Google’s Android XR and Snap‘s consumer Spectacles announcement driving momentum for mainstream XR adoption. The three-day event, drawing over 5,000 attendees and 250 exhibitors, showcased how AI integration and mature hardware are finally positioning extended reality technologies—which blend digital content with the physical world—for widespread deployment across enterprise and consumer markets.

What you should know: Industry leaders declared 2025 the year XR moves from experimental to mainstream, with AI serving as the critical catalyst.

• AWE co-founder Ori Inbar’s keynote emphasized that “the hardware is good enough, the tools are mature, and AI has lowered the barrier to entry,” urging developers to “stop building for the future and start shipping to the present.”
• “XR is the killer interface for AI,” Inbar said, framing artificial intelligence as both complement and accelerator for spatial computing adoption.
• Enterprise applications now represent 71% of the XR market, with demos focusing on spatial planning, logistics, training, and field service rather than just entertainment.

Major platform announcements: Google and Snap delivered keynotes that energized developers with concrete product roadmaps and AI integrations.

• Google’s Justin Payne introduced Android XR as “the first Android platform built for the Gemini era,” designed to unify headset and glasses development across Qualcomm and Samsung hardware.
• Snap CEO Evan Spiegel announced consumer-ready Spectacles arriving in 2026, backed by $3 billion in R&D over 11 years and supporting 4 million lenses used 8 billion times daily.
• Both platforms emphasized AI-native development, with Gemini and OpenAI powering spatial interactions, WebXR support, and shared gaming overlays.

Hardware ecosystem expansion: Multiple companies unveiled Android XR-compatible devices, signaling coordinated ecosystem development.

• XREAL previewed Project Aura eyewear featuring a 70-degree field of view, upgraded Qualcomm X1S spatial chip, and native Gemini voice interface support.
• Qualcomm demonstrated its new AR1+ Gen1 chipset, an on-device AI processor designed specifically for standalone smartglasses.
• Viture, which according to IDC accounts for 52% of AR smartglasses sales worldwide, showcased AI-powered software that transforms movies into 3D spatial experiences.

Enterprise and defense applications: Military and business use cases demonstrated XR’s practical deployment beyond consumer entertainment.

• Palmer Luckey, founder of defense contractor Anduril, revealed that Meta and his company are jointly taking over Microsoft’s $22 billion IVAS military AR contract, developing heads-up displays for infantry threat detection and drone management.
• “The best AR hardware isn’t coming out of DARPA anymore,” Luckey said. “It’s coming from the consumer sector. Meta, Snap, Google, they’ve pulled ahead.”
• His Eagle Eye platform fuses thermal, RF signal, and spatial data in real time for “life-and-death decisions” that will “trickle back to consumers.”

Creative and cultural perspectives: Industry veterans emphasized XR’s potential as a storytelling and identity medium beyond pure technology.

• ILM’s Vicki Dobbs Beck described the shift from “storytelling to storyliving,” with emotionally responsive worlds powered by real-time AI and character memory.
• Researcher Helen Papagiannis introduced her concept of “reality modding,” proposing that reality itself is becoming editable and customizable like software.
• The Bushnell family, including Atari founder Nolan Bushnell, advocated for intuitive mechanics and social play, emphasizing that “nobody wants to play a tutorial” and users must understand experiences “in the first ten seconds.”

Notable innovations: Several companies demonstrated breakthrough applications that blur physical and digital boundaries.

• Brent Bushnell’s Dream Park created walkable mixed-reality experiences without controllers, recently raising $1.3 million to expand beyond their Santa Monica pilot.
• Auki Labs deployed QR codes across the convention floor for indoor navigation, winning an Auggie Award for their PoseMesh decentralized positioning protocol.
• Flow Immersive showcased layered, interactive data visualizations running smoothly across headsets, phones, and smartglasses after seven years of development.

Industry recognition: The 16th annual Auggie Awards honored excellence across 19 categories, with winners including Snap’s Lens Studio for Best Developer Tool and XREAL One Series for Best Headworn Device.

• Ten new XR Hall of Fame inductees were recognized, including HoloLens architect Andrew Fuller, VR psychology researcher Mel Slater, and NASA/USC pioneer Scott Fisher.
• The packed induction ceremony highlighted XR’s foundational work finally “catching up to its own imagination” after nearly two decades of development.

Why this matters: The convergence of stable platforms, purpose-built hardware, and AI-native tools is creating the first credible path to mainstream XR adoption, with enterprise deployment leading consumer adoption and military applications driving hardware innovation that will benefit civilian markets.