🔓 Remix Reality Insider: Rewriting the Rules of Attention

Your premium drop on the systems, machines, and forces reshaping reality.

🛰️ The Signal

This week’s defining shift.

Ad blocking is coming for the real world.

This month, AR innovator and engineer Stijn Spanhove went viral for programming Snap Spectacles to block ads from the real-world environment using Gemini. Billboards, posters, logos—gone. It was a novel hack, but it also acted as a strong reminder that in spatial computing, we don’t have to accept the world as it is. We can edit it.

This instinct isn’t new. In 2015, a student hackathon project, Brand Killer, blurred logos and ads with a DIY headset. Burger King Brazil’s “Burn That Ad” campaign let users torch competitors' billboards in AR in 2019. Even Google’s original Glass API banned advertising in apps by default. And the most vivid cultural artifact of all, Keiichi Matsuda’s short film Hyper-Reality, warned us what happens when branded content takes over our line of sight.

We’re entering a moment where editing the real world isn’t just possible, it’s something people want. And ads are the first to go. This may reveal a deeper desire for agency over our perception of reality and a fear that brands will take that control first.

AR is not just another screen, it’s a shift in how we see and shape the world around us. If we want a future that’s immersive but not overwhelming, we’ll need to build it with intention.

🧠 Reality Decoded

Your premium deep dive.

From Snickers’ field goal challenge to Gucci’s immersive fashion doc and Diageo’s tequila journey, brands are starting to explore mixed reality marketing, using headworn spatial computers as a new creative canvas.

PUMA’s new Meta Quest 3 activation, which brings its All-Pro Nitro basketball shoes into mixed reality, is the latest example. This WebXR experience runs directly in the browser—no download, no app store—just a URL and play. Mixed reality browsers are a fertile opportunity for marketers, making MR campaigns faster to deploy, easier to access, and ideal for cross-platform reach. We’ve seen this pattern before with WebAR on mobile, and now it’s arriving on headsets.

These early brand experiments are also showing how powerful it can be to lean into what makes a headset unique. From body tracking that makes it feel like characters are reacting to you, to creative uses of the controller to measure your feet, the magic comes from blurring the line between digital and physical. That’s the key to making branded MR content truly stick.

Key Takeaway:
Mixed reality browsers are opening up a major opportunity for brands to experiment with headworn experiences that are easy to launch and widely accessible. The brands leaning in early are showing that the real value comes from using the unique capabilities of headsets to create playful, physical, and presence-driven content.

📡 Weekly Radar

Your weekly scan across the spatial computing stack.

🤖 Amazon Launches DeepFleet AI and Surpasses One Million Robots in Operation

• DeepFleet AI model enhances robotic fleet travel efficiency by 10%, resulting in faster deliveries, lower costs, and reduced energy consumption.
• Why this matters: DeepFleet is a strong example of purpose-built AI driving real-world gains in performance, safety, and ROI.

🍔 Serve Robots Hit Atlanta Sidewalks as Nationwide Expansion Gains Speed

• Serve Robotics has introduced its AI-powered delivery robots to Atlanta, expanding into a fourth major U.S. metropolitan area.
• Why this matters: Teaming up with Uber Eats and Shake Shack gives Serve instant national reach, and Atlanta shows how fast its footprint can scale in urban markets.

🏭 frontline.io Powers Digital Twin Training on HMS SiNGRAY G2 AR Headset

• frontline.io’s software will come pre-installed and optimized on the HMS SiNGRAY G2, offering enterprise-ready AR out of the box.
• Why this matters: HMS and frontline.io are embedding their solutions into workflows, not just selling technology.

⚕️ HealthpointCapital Acquires XR Surgical Planning Firm ImmersiveTouch

• ImmersiveTouch's platform enables surgeons to create interactive 3D plans and visualize procedures using mixed reality headsets.
• Why this matters: Immersive technology is becoming a key layer in surgical innovation, driving better outcomes and greater efficiency.

🏙️ McKinsey Finds Digital Twins Can Boost Public Sector ROI by Up to 30%

• According to a McKinsey report, digital twins can improve capital and operational efficiency of government infrastructure projects by 20-30%.
• Why this matters: As spatial tools become widely available, digital twins are reshaping how industries, from public works to supply chains, plan, invest, and build.

🛠️ Unity Locks In Android XR for Production-Ready Development

• Developers can now build confidently for upcoming Android XR-based headsets using Unity’s stable toolkit.
• Why this matters: Unity's tools unlock cross-platform XR development, positioning devs to launch with the next wave of Android XR devices.

💰 Genesis AI Raises $105M to Build Universal Platform for General-Purpose Robots

• Genesis AI exits stealth to develop a universal robotics foundation model and platform designed to automate physical labor.
• Why this matters: Foundation models for robotics promise to generalize across tasks and hardware, getting smarter with every robot they run on.

🌀 Tom's Take

Unfiltered POV from the editor-in-chief.

When it comes to AR glasses, there’s no rush to put displays on our faces.

As much as I believe in the future of true AR smartglasses, the near-term win is all about AI glasses. These lightweight, stylish, audio-first devices have cameras that act as eyes to enable a smarter AI assistant and are not trying to replace your smartphone but rather complement it.

The smartphone remains the best screen we have, and it plays well with others. The right next move to get from our smartphone to our eventual wearable future feels like taking a baby step in phone co-existence rather than outright replacement. The near future looks more like Her, where if the AI has something to show you, you simply grab the screen from your pocket that you already have to check it out, rather than Iron Man, where it's all up in your face.

Starting with displayless AI glasses puts the focus on its killer app, AI. Once people experience the daily value of AI in a device they actually want to wear, everything shifts. It builds trust, creates habits, and sparks demand for more. Displays will come, but not as the starting point. They’ll arrive when users are ready, not when the industry is.

Keeping the device simple also makes it lighter, cheaper, and more wearable, which are also key ingredients for adoption.

To get to our post-smartphone future, we need to earn our way there. And AI glasses are the right first step.

🔮 What’s Next

3 signals pointing to what’s coming next.

1. The race for the robot brain is on
   A new wave of robotics companies is building foundational models that enable machines to see, think, and act. From Wayve’s self-taught driving AI to Genesis AI’s general-purpose robotics platform, the goal is to achieve shared intelligence that adapts across various hardware and environments. These systems learn by doing, not coding, and improve with each deployment. Just as language models transformed software, robot brains are set to do the same for machines in motion.
2. Fleet management is now a software story
   The future of fleet automation is being shaped by software. Amazon’s DeepFleet AI and Beep’s AutonomOS are now coordinating large-scale fleets in real-world conditions. These systems manage routing, timing, and coordination at scale. They demonstrate that fleets are not about individual machines but rather the software that keeps them all moving.
3. The enterprise stack will be bundled
   Enterprises don’t want to build XR deployments from scratch. They want ready-made solutions. HMS and frontline.io ship AR training out of the box. Sphere and Vuzix have partnered to deliver spatial workflows through rugged smart glasses. These bundles embed software into hardware, creating systems that work from day one. The value isn’t just in the tools, it’s in selling a full-stack solution that integrates deeply and sticks.

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