2025 felt like a meagre year for immersive tech

Executive summary

Welcome to your weekly briefing on the metaverse and spatial computing. Here are your snippets to sound smarter in meetings this week:

• Top stories: 2025 felt like a meagre year for immersive tech.

• Event: We are hosting an event on 15 January in London, based around VR films! Come along if you wish.

• This week’s stories: Avegant and Vuzix have unveiled a jointly developed lightweight binocular AR smart glasses reference design at CES 2026, combining Avegant’s AG-30L3 light engine with Vuzix waveguide optics and manufactured with Quanta Computer.

Main story

It was difficult writing for the Immersive Wire this year. There were lots of developments and trends across VR and AR, but much of it felt like smaller snippets rather than clear areas of focus. Yes, there were a few things that were genuinely big and interesting. Samsung announced a premium Android XR headset, Project Moohan, which was particularly notable, and there were ongoing rumours that the Apple Vision Pro may have a cheaper version coming out at some point.

But 2025 felt more like a pause year. There was not as much interest or development in the market, and in some cases, there were times that could even be considered steps backwards. This points to a market that is either trying to find its footing again, or lacking legitimate propulsion engines for growth.

Read more in this short article.

This week’s stories

• Avegant and Vuzix have unveiled a jointly developed lightweight binocular AR smart glasses reference design at CES 2026, combining Avegant’s AG-30L3 light engine with Vuzix waveguide optics and manufactured with Quanta Computer.

• Meta has paused the international rollout of its Ray-Ban Display smart glasses to prioritise fulfilling US demand, delaying planned early 2026 launches in markets including the UK, Canada, France and Italy.

• Plimsoll Productions has launched a new VR and AR division called Plimsoll Immersive, appointing Alex Ranken as creative director to develop original immersive content and adapt the company’s natural history IP for 2D and 3D experiences.

• Rokid has launched Rokid AI Glasses Style at CES 2026, unveiling a 38.5-gram, display-free smart glasses platform built around an open AI ecosystem and prescription-first design to support everyday AI use.

• Vitrealab has raised an oversubscribed $11mn Series A round to accelerate development and industrialisation of its Quantum Light Chip technology, aiming to address optical performance bottlenecks in augmented reality displays.

Note: The Immersive Wire is run by Tom Ffiske, who also works at Accenture. The contents of the newsletter should not be regarded as Accenture’s views.

All spelling mistakes are deliberate, actually.