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We've just wrapped up a busy week in Silicon Valley, packed with meetings and preparations ahead of our major appearance at AWE in Los Angeles. Here's a breakdown of our key insights and reflections:
We're in San Francisco meeting partners, investors, and customers, gearing up for AWE (Augmented World Expo) in Los Angeles, kicking off June 10th. We've invested significantly to showcase the potential of decentralized, collaborative spatial computing. Our aim is clear: demonstrate to tech giants like Google and Meta why decentralized solutions matter for robots, AR glasses, and smart cities. If you're attending AWE, definitely come by—we're confident we'll make an impression.
Our visit confirmed something we've long suspected: China is way ahead of Silicon Valley in robotics. We've been meeting with robotics players and investors here, and the knowledge gap is substantial. Top engineers, documentation, and supply chains are predominantly Chinese. One Silicon Valley entrepreneur told us it can take months to repair robots due to a lack of local infrastructure, something unimaginable in places like Shenzhen or Hangzhou, where replacement parts arrive almost instantly.
One eye-opening revelation was that many Silicon Valley investors aren't even aware of leading Chinese robotics companies, despite those companies shipping thousands of robots. This lack of knowledge is concerning for the West's competitive future.
"If Chinese people left Silicon Valley, the robotics industry here would collapse pretty quickly," we heard.
Alex, who will be speaking at AWE, highlighted important questions about privacy and spatial computing in his upcoming talk, Manifest Destiny in the Mirror World. The core issue revolves around who owns the rights to digital layers placed over physical spaces.
Recent examples like Louis Vuitton’s Snapchat collaboration, projecting branded imagery onto landmarks like the Eiffel Tower without compensating local governments, underscore the urgency of addressing AR privacy. It raised deeper ethical questions: Should individuals have rights regarding how they're digitally rendered?
We believe strongly in decentralizing visual positioning systems (VPS). Today, large companies like Google, Apple, and Niantic act as "AR landlords," controlling the virtual space on top of physical locations without necessarily owning or maintaining those spaces.
Nils argues that AR privacy could extend even to automatically blurring faces using smartphone technology to protect individual rights—particularly children—from unwanted exposure.
“Should we have a right not to be digitally rendered upon? Shouldn't we protect people from potential digital abuse?”
Alex raised concerns about the practicalities and implications of embedding such privacy features at the OS or hardware level. He questioned the societal acceptance and execution feasibility in the American context, given the complex relationship Americans have with personal liberties versus regulation.
“This isn't just a technical issue; it's a societal one, likely unresolved for decades,” Alex noted.
However, Nils believes inevitable pressure from large corporations and governments will lead to built-in AR camera and usage restrictions, similar to current drone regulations.
Our commitment at Auki to an open-source approach is strategic. Unlike competitors aiming to become the digital landlords themselves, we empower venue owners to control their digital real estate. We see decentralization as crucial, not just for ethical reasons, but for practical long-term adoption.
“Auki doesn't want your data or your digital property—we want you to control it. That’s why we believe our approach will succeed in the long run.”
Stay tuned for more updates after AWE. We look forward to continuing the conversation in our Discord community!
Auki is making the physical world accessible to AI by building the real world web: away for robots and digital devices like smart glasses and phones to browse, navigate, and search physical locations.
70% of the world economy is still tied to physical locations and labor, so making the physical world accessible to AI represents a 3X increase in the TAM of AI in general. Auki's goal is to become the decentralized nervous system of AI in the physical world, providing collaborative spatial reasoning for the next 100bn devices on Earth and beyond.
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