AWE 2026 brought more than 5,000 attendees, 250 exhibitors and 400 speakers to Long Beach, with the event framed around “I, Spatial: Humans Empowered by Spatial AI.” The show floor covered smart glasses, immersive entertainment, enterprise applications, robotics, reality capture, digital twins and developer tools.
First of all, congratulations to all of the ‘Auggie Awards’ winners and the AWE team for pulling off this flagship event!
AWE 2026 made several buying priorities easier to compare in one place. Smart glasses dominated much of the attention, while AI-assisted authoring, worker guidance, reality capture, digital twins, rollout support and privacy all had enough presence to show how broad the enterprise XR stack has become.
Here are the five things we learnt about enterprise XR from AWE 2026.
AI Is Moving into XR Production Work
AWE’s spatial AI theme showed up in developer tools, training creation, smart glasses and first-person guidance.
Google won Best Use of AI with XR Vibe Coding using XR Blocks and Gemini, which turns Gemini’s 3D web creations into immersive XR experiences. MetaNeural won Best Content Creation Tool with an AI-powered simulation platform for generating nonlinear training scenarios in natural language. Viture also used AWE to show Helix, AI-powered safety glasses built with NVIDIA XR AI for industrial, scientific and clinical workflows.
AI in XR is moving into production tasks. Developers want faster ways to build spatial prototypes. Training teams want faster ways to create and adapt scenarios. Frontline teams want guidance that responds to the worker’s view, task and environment.
AI-assisted XR will need clear guardrails before it moves into live work. A training team still has to check whether generated scenarios reflect the real procedure, while a worker following guidance through smart glasses needs confidence that the instructions are based on the right data.
In industrial, lab and clinical settings, companies also need to know what the device captures, where that information goes and who signs off the instruction before it reaches the person doing the job.
Smart Glasses Need To Nail the Practicalities of the Workplace
Smart glasses carried much of the energy at AWE 2026.
Snap opened pre-orders for Specs at $2,195 and won Best Headworn Device. Google Maps XR won Best Consumer App. The expo floor also had smart glasses activity around eye tracking, input, validation, app platforms, chips and displays.
The headline devices – particularly Specs – will get most of the attention, and rightly so. But workplace adoption will depend on everything around the device.
Ganzin showed eye-tracking technology for AI glasses with partners including Qualcomm and Jorjin. KiWear, Prolo and PeKe Labs brought different input methods for smart glasses and connected devices. MentraOS positioned itself as an open-source platform for apps across multiple smart glasses brands, and Quest Global focused on validation and testing for AI-enabled smart wearables.
Buyers will compare smart glasses by comfort, battery life, field of view, app access, device management, privacy controls and input methods. Voice, gesture, touch and eye tracking all behave differently when workers are moving, wearing gloves, dealing with noise or keeping both hands free.
Specs gave AWE its big AR glasses moment. Enterprise adoption will depend on whether the wider smart glasses ecosystem can support normal working conditions, not only launch demos.
Enterprise XR Needs Owners Before Bigger Pilots
AWE’s enterprise programme put deployment discipline near the centre of the week.
The event promoted more than 300 enterprise and government organisations scaling XR and AI deployments. Its Enterprise and Government VIP programme included private tours and closed-door roundtables for sectors including manufacturing, aerospace, healthcare, defence and retail.
ArborXR CEO Brad Scoggin used a Main Stage session to discuss why enterprise spatial computing deployments get stuck in pilot phase. His examples included weak internal ownership, overcomplicated first use cases, poor ROI tracking, vendor lock-in and poor integration with existing learning systems.
Several AWE winners fitted that deployment theme. FabStation won Best Enterprise Solution with AR for structural steel fabrication. NICS Korea won Best Education & Training Solution with XR training for chemical emergency response and multi-agency collaboration. ARVIS won Best Healthcare & Wellness Solution with AR surgical navigation for orthopaedics.
These use cases are tied to operational pressure: fabrication accuracy, emergency preparation, surgical support and high-risk training. Each one still needs an internal owner, user training, support, integration and performance evidence.
Enterprise XR has plenty of impressive demos. More buyers now need a route from small pilot to repeatable programme, with clear ownership before the headset order grows.
Digital Twins and Reality Capture Are Becoming Enterprise Infrastructure
AWE 2026 gave a platform to reality capture and digital twins.
The event added a Digital Twin track, a Reality Capture Pavilion and a new Best Reality Capture Auggie category. Cintoo won that award with a VR experience for streaming large scan and BIM datasets at full scale. MultiSet AI won Best Developer Tool with scan-agnostic visual positioning and object tracking across indoor and outdoor spaces.
Insight Enterprises also presented digital twins built from NeRF and 3D Gaussian Splatting, with services around capture, optimisation, interactivity and data integration.
Reality capture earned more space at AWE 2026 because industrial XR depends on a reliable view of the workplace. A maintenance team using a scan or digital twin needs to know the model reflects the site, the right people can access it and updates reach the systems already used for planning and repair. Cintoo’s VR experience and MultiSet AI’s positioning work both fit that need: spatial data only helps if workers can trust where they are, what they’re looking at and which version of the site they’re using.
Privacy Has Become Part of the Product Case
AWE 2026 gave privacy more visibility through the new Ethical XR Product of the Year category, created with XR Guild.
SecureMR by PICO and ByteDance won the award with a Privacy Vault architecture that lets developers build mixed reality with scene perception while locking away camera feed access through a Zero-Trust sandbox.
Mixed reality devices can analyse rooms, surfaces, objects, movement and people. AI tools can add interpretation on top. Workplace use adds more pressure because devices may operate around employees, patients, visitors, customers, confidential sites and regulated environments.
Privacy architecture can help IT, legal and worker representatives review XR before camera access and scene data block deployment. Vendors need clear answers on what the device sees, what developers can access, what employers can store, how long data is kept and how workers are protected.
AWE 2026 still had the show-floor spectacle the XR industry enjoys. Now buyers should judge the next wave of XR tech by whether those products can pass approvals, support normal working days and connect to work people already need to do.
Images from AWE, Google, Cintoo
