XREAL's CEO wants to build a $138bn AR glasses ecosystem in Shanghai

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 Story: XREAL’s wants to build a $138bn AR glasses ecosystem in Shanghai (analysis below).

• Other stories: A new study in Frontiers in Psychology found that imagining pain in a virtual body reduces the sense of ownership over it, offering insights into conditions like depersonalization (more stories below).

Top story

XREAL’s CEO wants to build a $138bn AR glasses ecosystem in Shanghai.

• What was exactly said? "We hope to open up a trillion-Chinese yuan new industry ecosystem in Shanghai's Pudong New Area through AR glasses," Xu Chi, the CEO, said at the 2025 Pudong New Area Investment Promotion Conference.

• How? The CEO wishes to boost its market presence and capacity via Shanghai, and in turn it will help to solidify its place as a hub for AR glasses.

• Could it happen? Potentially. In July 2022, Shanghai announced plans to establish a metaverse industry fund valued at approximately $1.5bn. The city is focusing a lot on it, and in turn its bringing companies like XREAL.

Other stories

• Aalto University researchers used VR gaming with fMRI to study brain activity in children with ADHD, revealing distinct network activation patterns during active tasks compared to resting state scans.

• Accedo has launched a specialist XR consultancy to help video service providers efficiently create and deploy XR video-centric experiences using its industry expertise and software solutions.

• CustomerXR has launched as a New York-based design agency creating custom VR and AR solutions for major US brands, and is an approved developer for both Meta and Apple platforms.

• Elmbridge Museum, in partnership with Gathering Place 360, will offer free VR historical experiences on 14 April 2025, allowing visitors aged nine and up to explore periods like the Bronze Age and WWI.

• A new study in Frontiers in Psychology found that imagining pain in a virtual body reduces the sense of ownership over it, offering insights into conditions like depersonalisation.

• Space Age Interactive has unveiled VELOCIBLASTER, a Meta-backed multiplayer VR shooter where players battle as flying, sci-fi-armed velociraptors, featured at GDC 2025.

• The University of Bath has launched Race Yourselves!, a VR cycling game for Meta Quest that combines AI and gamified workouts, developed by the REVEAL research centre.

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.