Snapchat CEO to Deliver Keynote at AWE 2025, Highlighting Company’s Commitment to Expanding in XR

The stage is set for Evan Spiegel, CEO of Snap Inc., to headline the upcoming AWE 2025 in June. This annual XR (Extended Reality) showcase, running from June 10th to 12th in Long Beach, California, anticipates a crowd of over 6,000 attendees, 300 exhibitors, 400 speakers, and a sprawling 150,000 square feet of expo space. In the realm of augmented reality, Snap Inc., known for Snapchat and its Spectacles AR glasses, is poised to unveil its latest advancements.

Although Snap is among the rare few offering standalone AR glasses today, it’s still somewhat seen as an outlier in the XR universe. This outsider status is partly because Snap is carving its AR niche differently compared to other tech giants. For instance, the likes of Quest, PSVR 2, and others zero in on gaming, whereas Apple’s Vision Pro channels entertainment and productivity. In contrast, Snap’s Spectacles emphasize a social-first approach to AR, favoring experiences linked to real-world settings and shared moments among multiple users in the same space.

Evan Spiegel, as he takes the main stage at one of the planet’s grandest XR assemblies, AWE 2025, aims to elaborate on Snap’s vision for AR, hoping to forge stronger ties within the XR community. While companies like Qualcomm and XREAL, familiar faces in the conference circuit, will also have their say, all eyes will be on Spiegel to see how Snap intends to push the boundaries of AR.

Interestingly, Snap’s quest to establish a unique AR platform from the ground up partly explains its outsider perception. They’re not just about crafting AR glasses but are also developing a tailor-made operating system—Snap OS—for their Spectacles. On top of that, their authoring tool, Lens Studio, represents another layer developers must master, diverging from more common platforms like Unity, making content porting a challenge.

Snap’s trailblazing approach underscores their fervent commitment to XR, as revealed in an insightful chat with Scott Myers, Snap’s VP of Hardware. Myers conveyed that their goal transcends merely enhancing Snapchat with Spectacles; instead, they envision a future where these glasses become the new smartphones. He elaborated, “We want people to look up through their glasses, not down at their smartphones.”

Driven by a mission to offer unparalleled experiences for developers, Snap continues to evolve its platform and tools, intensively iterating based on feedback. Myers himself is deeply engaged, frequently donning Spectacles to explore new features, reinforcing a philosophy of collective learning with developers to streamline the development process further.

Yet, as Snap sets its sights on the AR horizon, it faces formidable competition from tech behemoths like Meta, Apple, and Google, all racing to deliver the first widely adopted pair of AR glasses. Snap’s success will hinge on strategic maneuvering to secure its place in this ever-evolving tech landscape.

As the Premier Media Partner of AWE USA 2025, we at Road to VR are thrilled to offer our readers an exclusive 20% discount on tickets, promising an insightful journey into the forefront of AR advancements.