Like the holidays before it, CES is inevitable. It comes the first Monday in January and if you are not there you’ll begin the year with FOMO which is why there are over 5,000 journalists and analysts covering the event.
Swave Photonics Secures $28.3M to Revolutionize 3D Holographic Displays. The Belgian holographic display maker Series A funding to advance its Holographic eXtended Reality (HXR) platform. Swave’s technology delivers high-quality 3D holographic images for AI-powered augmented reality smart glasses and heads-up displays. The round was co-led by Imec.xpand and SFPIM Relaunch, with participation from new investors including the EIC Fund and Murata Electronics. This funding follows a $10.47 million seed round in 2023. Swave plans to showcase its advancements at CES where it was awarded a CES 2025 Innovation Award for World-First Holographic Display Technology for Augmented Reality.
OpenAI’s For-Profit Shift Sparks Legal and Ethical Debates Initially established as a nonprofit in 2015, OpenAI needs to transition to a for-profit model to attract substantial investments. This move has ignited significant controversy. OpenAI co-founder Elon Musk has filed for an injunction to halt the transition, alleging it deviates from OpenAI’s original mission and raises antitrust concerns. Meta and others have also filed briefs opposing OpenAI’s plan.
This Week’s Notable Cinematic AI Shorts
This column, formerly called “This Week in XR,” is also a podcast hosted by the author of this column, Charlie Fink, Ted Schilowitz, a former studio executive and co-founder of Red Camera, and Rony Abovitz, founder of Magic Leap. This week our guest is Gary Shapiro, CEO of the CES. We can be found on Spotify, iTunes, and YouTube.
What We’re Reading
An objective analysis of XR in 2024 (Skarred Ghost Blog)
