I, Spatial: Augmented World Expo 2026 and the Next Wave of AI-Centric XR and Spatial Computing

Building on Augmented World Expo (AWE) 2025, where the main message was that Extended Reality (XR) was going mainstream, the key theme of AWE 2026 was “I, Spatial.” Noting the growing collaboration between Artificial Intelligence (AI) and XR in tackling real-world tasks and decisions, there was acknowledgment of the need for AI to become faster, better, cheaper, and more relevant to daily life and work while empowering humans with Spatial AI. Multiple announcements in and around the show demonstrated the ongoing innovation in XR hardware, enabling platforms and use cases, and the shift to personal AI, highlighted below.

On the platform side, Qualcomm announced its next-gen XR platform, the Snapdragon® Reality Elite. Aligned with enhanced AI capabilities, Elite brings up to 160% higher Neural Processing Unit (NPU) performance, 60% higher Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) performance, and 30% higher Central Processing Unit (CPU) performance within the same thermal envelope when compared with the Snapdragon XR2+ Gen 2 predecessor. In addition to supporting 4K per-eye resolution at 120 Frames per Second (fps), the solution can help enable slimmer, lighter XR devices with an up to 20% extended battery life at the same workload, helping to address a key limitation of existing XR glasses and vastly increasing their real-world utility. Qualcomm also announced the Snapdragon Scalable Turnkey AI-Ready Toolkit (START), designed to enable the next phase of personal AI devices. This combines Snapdragon® platforms’ powered hardware modules with an AI-agnostic full software stack and a network of manufacturing partners to let product designers focus on design and experience, speed development time, and better scale personal AI devices, starting with smart glasses, speeding up time to market.

This same Qualcomm platform is first powering the dedicated compute unit behind the long-awaited Android XR XREAL AURA smart glasses, formerly known as Project Aura, which were unveiled and confirmed for a Fall 2026 launch. Combining Optical See-Through (OST) glasses, Android XR, Gemini integration, the Snapdragon® Reality Elite Platform, and the inside-the-glass XREAL X1S Spatial Coprocessor, the XREAL AURA seeks to deliver a more comprehensive, higher-quality spatial computing experience with a 70-degree Field of View (FOV) in an ultra-small 95 Gram (g) form factor.

In addition to the hardware unveiling, XREAL also highlighted the expanding ecosystem of partners developing XR experiences for Android XR and XREAL AURA, including games, sports, educational, and healthcare-related applications. This continued development will be vital in accelerating XR adoption to a wider range of users and enabling a combined spatial computing and entertainment platform, which has been the long-term vision and goal for XR devices.

Snap also introduced SPECS, its latest augmented reality glasses. Its approach sits somewhere between basic AI glasses and more advanced spatial compute platforms, while remaining fully standalone, offering a 51-degree FOV. The smaller 47 Millimeter (mm) model weighs 132 grams and offers removable inserts to support various prescriptions. Powered by two Snapdragon processors, one for computer vision and the other for applications (a.k.a. Lenses), the SPECS offer 4 hours of mixed-use battery life, including audio and video playback, AI assistance, notifications, and various experiences such as games, directions, translation, timers, creative tools, and many other immersive experiences.

VITURE introduced Helix, the first AI safety eyewear platform, built on NVIDIA’s XR AI solution, representing VITURE’s first major milestone in its expansion into AI. Targeting industrial, scientific, and clinical settings, the solution streams the user’s perspective to a multimodal AI in real time, enabling AI-assisted coaching, compliance, and provenance capture of each shift. The solution combines a fully transparent safety-glasses form factor with a 12 Megapixel (MP) camera, speakers, and Wi-Fi and Bluetooth® connectivity. The glasses are fully standalone and support a 60+ minute battery life. Thanks to NVIDIA XR AI, the glasses can coach operators on standard operating procedures and continuously improve the underlying model with each shift. VITURE Helix is expected to begin shipping in 1Q 2027.

AWE 2026 clearly demonstrates the growing shift from AI glasses as a concept to fully fledged personal AI and spatial computing platforms, as well as the maturity of the hardware, software, and development ecosystems. These developments continue to propel the market forward, and ABI Research forecasts that the smart glasses market will reach 68 million annual shipments by 2030, growing from 14 million this year. However, it also exposed several other potential challenges in scaling up the XR market.

• Form Factor and Compute Architecture Diversity: The announcements highlight diversity in form factors, capabilities, and compute architecture, each with its own strengths and trade-offs. These include fully standalone small-form-factor devices (SPECS), more comprehensive headset-standalone devices (Samsung Galaxy XR, Apple Vision Pro), a tethered split-compute approach with the majority of compute remaining on the smartphone, compute puck/companion (XREAL AURA), and other approaches. Offering significant differences in capabilities, experiences, battery life, and price points, while creating a diverse set of opportunities, could inhibit broader scalability until a specific architecture dominates.
• Connectivity Architecture: Related to the compute architecture is the connectivity. Some XR devices rely solely on Bluetooth®; others rely on a wired connection; and others require direct-to-cloud connectivity such as 4G/5G, Reduced Capability (RedCap), Non-terrestrial Networks (NTN), or Wi-Fi. Some devices also require low-latency connectivity to input devices such as wristbands, while in the future, there may be a distributed Personal Area Network (PAN) of AI devices that want to share information directly with each other or with a personal AI compute device without the need for a tethering cable. This may require evolving technologies such as ultra-low-power Wi-Fi, Ultra-Low Latency (ULL) Human Interface Device (HID) Bluetooth®, or certain implementations of Ultra-Wideband (UWB) from companies like SPARK Microsystems, which can offer high-throughput, low-latency connectivity between devices.
• Divergent Ecosystems: In addition to compute and connectivity divergence, another barrier remains the multiple different ecosystems within XR devices. With some vendors backing Android XR, Apple with its own visionOS, Meta with Horizon, and Snap with Snap OS, among other device or application-specific implementations, developers are torn about choosing their preferred ecosystem, which could limit the utility and quality of user experiences on XR devices.
• Multi-Device Orchestration: In addition, there needs to be a path toward a more open ecosystem that enables interoperability between devices from different vendors, ensures seamless information sharing, and potentially computing distribution across different form factors. Only then will the vision of a personal AI device ecosystem that can optimize based on the context and compute capability of multiple devices be realized. However, this also needs to be balanced with vendors’ ability to differentiate and create unique value propositions for their own ecosystem of devices. This may become particularly challenging as chipsets and operating systems from different platform providers and Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) are deployed.
• High Pricing: While some devices, such as Meta Ray-Ban, are shipping in significant volumes, many of these newly announced devices will struggle to gain mainstream success. For example, the Snap SPECS will retail for US$2,195, while the XREAL AURA will cost no more than US$1,500. With strong price increases also now beginning to impact the wider consumer market, exacerbated by the ongoing memory crisis, these could remain luxury items in the near future. This could also negatively impact the devices with higher compute requirements and limited supply over the next few years. However, new modules, turnkey solutions, integrated platforms, and continued efficiencies will help reduce hardware and development costs over time.
• Privacy Challenges: Consumers remain wary of smart glasses' impact on privacy. Some vendors, such as Snap, made great efforts to emphasize privacy as a core design principle of the SPECS, asking when accessing sensitive information, prioritizing on-device processing, and providing an Light-Emitting Diode (LED) indicator when recordings are taking place. However, vendors will likely need to do more than this to alleviate concerns about widespread recording and ensure compliance with regional regulations.
• Power Consumption: Despite continued innovation in reducing power consumption, the limited form factors and small battery sizes of many smart glasses mean battery life remains limited. Continued improvements in low-power AI compute, low-power connectivity, fast charging, and other innovations, without compromising performance, are required to deliver a better end-user experience that can enable longer usage sessions across personal, home, and work environments.
• Alternative Personal AI Form Factors: In addition to smart glasses, other personal AI form factors are emerging. This could include more advanced watches, hearables, pendants, rings, or other emerging wearable AI form factors. These can augment the experience of smart glasses, with users purchasing multiple depending on the context they are in, other form factors could eat into the total market opportunity for smart glasses. However, the momentum, competition, and ecosystem development in the AI glasses sector can help to scale up the personal AI device market more broadly, leading to a whole host of new devices as part of the personal AI and spatial computing ecosystem.