At the end of last year we put together a 2024 recap that was frankly ungainly in length and loading time, but it couldn’t be helped since we had accomplished so much each month. This year is no different, so for 2025 we decided to split the recap into two halves.
The first half of 2025 has been nothing short of extraordinary at Auki. Our robotics work took off in a big way, partnerships with Zappar and Mentra culminated in industry-leading demos, and we’re becoming an established name at the world’s leading AI conferences.
January
Terri’s grand entrance: The much anticipated arrival of our Unitree Go2-W dog and G1 humanoid robots was a big milestone in our robotics journey! Shortly after arriving, Terri was named after our collective inspiration, Terence McKenna, and given the title of Humanoid Resources Intern.
Meet Terri MechKenna!
Messari report: Auki was highlighted prominently in Messari's "State of DePIN 2024" report, underscoring our leadership in DePIN and in particular the “breakout trend” of spatial computing.
Robot navigation: For the first time our robots could navigate directly to specific products through touchscreen inputs and to tasks from Cactus.
Gotu App Clip: Our team traveled to Zappar’s office in London for a joint hackathon that culminated in a working demo of app-free indoor navigation with audio cues for the visually impaired.
February
Mattercraft meets Auki domains: This time Zappar’s engineers came to us in Hong Kong and together we achieved another breakthrough: integrating Mattercraft with domains to enable real-time editing of location-based AR scenes, without the need for an app download.
Shopper navigation: We also integrated app-free navigation into Cactus so that shoppers can navigate to products in retail stores that have already been mapped with Cactus.
Intercognitive: Together with peaq, Geodnet, and Mawari, we founded the Intercognitive Foundation to establish global ecosystem standards for AI accessibility & interoperability.
Consensus HK: Terri and the team represented Auki at Consensus HK and drew quite the crowd.
SDK goes cross-platform: For the first time, our SDK expanded beyond Unity to support multiple platforms (C++, Objective-C, Swift, Javascript, etc.), greatly enhancing its accessibility and adoption potential.
March
ETH Denver: Nils presented our vision and technology on stage at ETH Denver, reinforcing our presence in the web3 community.
Public domain viewer: We released a public domain viewer, enabling remote exploration of Auki domains.
Terri integrates with domains: For the first time, Terri connected to an Auki domain and could navigate it autonomously—a big upgrade from being exclusively remote controlled!
Nashville showroom: Thanks to our partner in the U.S., we established a Cactus showroom in Nashville to connect directly with the US market.
April
First American pilot: Again with our U.S. partner, we launched our first American pilot at a prominent hardware store, demonstrating real-world value and versatility.
Terri joins Vitalik on stage: Terri had the honor of sharing the stage with Ethereum's Vitalik Buterin at Web3 Festival.
Aruco Marker Support: Expanded our technical capabilities by integrating support for Aruco markers.
Robotics partnerships: Nils and the team went to Shanghai to meet with three major robotics companies to discuss partnerships—Slamtec, Realman Robotics, and AgitBot—who are keen to partner with us to scale up their robotics distribution.
7 digit ARR: After months of negotiations and contract writing, we finally signed our first 7 digit ARR deal with a retail giant in Sweden!
June
AWE in Long Beach: This is what we’d been working toward for 6 months, and it was a tremendous success. Together with Mentra and Zappar, we put on a powerful showcase of innovations including conference-wide app-free navigation, spatially aware smart glasses, interoperable robotics, and more. Nils, Alex, and the Mentra team gave compelling presentations and we won two Auggie awards: Best Enterprise Solution and Best Web3 Implementation
Robots welcoming attendees to our booth at AWE
AWE was also Terri’s first trip abroad!
Domain NFTs: With the launch of domain NFTs, ownership of domains can now be verifiable and transferrable on-chain, and the community can start earning $AUKI rewards for setting up domains and AR experiences.
SuperAI in Singapore: We concluded the half-year mark with a huge presence at SuperAI, impressing industry leaders with most of the same demos from AWE. Nils gave a keynote on how DePIN will become the decentralized nervous system of AI, and also moderated a panel on physical AI with Unitree and Persona AI.
We made such a big splash at our June events that Nils has since been invited to speak at a number of other prominent AI conferences around the world—but those will be in the H2 recap. The whirlwind of H1 hasn’t slowed down at all, and we have much more to look forward to during the rest of the year.
Follow us on X for all the latest updates as we blaze forward on our mission to make the physical world accessible to AI through civilization-scale infrastructure funded, owned, and operated by the people.
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