Amazon AI Cuts, Snap Spins Out AR, VR Content Studios Retreat

Amazon announced another round of layoffs as part of what CEO Andy Jassy described as an ongoing cultural reset. Tens of thousands of positions have been eliminated over the past two years as the company restructures around cloud infrastructure, AI services and operational efficiency. Many of these jobs were white-collar developer roles. Earlier this week, Amazon also announced it would close its Amazon Go and Fresh storesciting the inability to create a “truly distinctive customer experience with the right economic model”.

Snap is in the process of growing its Specs AR glasses business into a standalone entity, separating hardware development from its core social media business. Clearly, Snap needs to get its misguided AR glasses adventure off the books before it does any more damage to its struggling stock. After launching last year to developers for $99/month, Spectacles will soon be offered to the public, but this whole multi-year effort is clearly DOA. After a decade of significant investment, Snap has lost the war with Google’s new Android Snap’s portable but bulky location-based standalone XR glasses will have a hard time competing with breakthrough products on the horizon.

Apple is developing a wearable AI, a small pin Device roughly comparable in size to an AirTag, according to reporting from MacRumors and The Verge. The device is described as a circular aluminum and glass disk with microphones, cameras, a speaker, and a physical button, designed to work with a future LLM version of Siri. It would rely on wireless charging and transfer the computing power to other Apple devices and the cloud. Internally, the project is still considered experimental, with no guarantee of release, although sources point to a possible 2027 launch. Apple’s AI pin effort comes after a string of failed or disappointing AI-first hardware launches by startups including Humane and Rabbit, and seems deliberately conservative by comparison. Rather than positioning the device as a phone replacement, Apple frames it as an environmental companion, tightly integrated into the existing ecosystem of iPhone, Watch and Vision Pro. The approach reflects Apple’s broader strategy of waiting for categories to break before entering them with vertically integrated hardware, silicon and software.

OpenAI is preparing its own consumer AI hardware debut, expected later this year, after acquiring former Apple design chief Jony Ive’s company for $6 billion. While details remain scarce, the effort is widely seen as an attempt to create a new category of AI-native devices built around conversation and perception rather than apps and screens. The convergence of Apple, OpenAI, and Google around AI hardware suggests that 2026 could mark the start of a new device cycle centered on the continued presence of AI.

Walkabout Mini Golf developer Mighty Coconut laid off roughly a quarter of its staff earlier this month, despite operating one of the most consistently successful titles on Quest. The studio also increased prices for new downloaded content courses, citing rising costs and platform pressure. If WMG, one of the most popular Quest titles, makes cuts, Meta’s VR efforts may be in worse shape than even the ugly closure of its own studios suggests.

French immersive studio Atlas V has raised $6 million to diversify from narrative VR into free-to-play gaming and location-based experiences. The studio has been responsible for some of the most popular and critically acclaimed titles in the Meta Quest store, including Spheres, Battlescar, Gloomy Eyes, Madrid Noir, and Wallace and Gromit. Atlas V executives were explicit that premium narrative VR has failed to reach sufficient audience size. The company plans to focus on experiences with clearer revenue models, including ticketed VR attractions and live installations.

This column has a companion version, the AI/XR Podcastpresented by the author, Charlie Fink, and Ted Schilowitz, former studio executive and futurist for Paramount and Fox, and Rony Abovitz, founder of Magic Leap. This week our guest is Ed Saatchi from Showrunner AI studio. We can be found at Spotify, iTunesAnd YouTube.