This Week In XR October 17th, 2024 ft. Joaquin Cuenca Abela, Co-Founder and CEO, Freepik

This Week In XR October 17th, 2024 ft. Joaquin Cuenca Abela, Co-Founder and CEO, Freepik

Author: Charlie Fink Productions October 19, 2024 Duration: 47:41
This week our guest is Joaquin Cuenca Abela, co-founder and CEO of Freepik. Rony is off for the Jewish holiday, Sukkot. Earlier in the week, he launched his new company SynthBee with $20 million dollars of VC money. Also in the news, Nvidia enters software with a high-performing open source AI model, competing with its biggest customers. Our sponsor Zappar now has got a deep-pocketed backer with an exit strategy, Infinite Reality. Freepik CEO Joaquin Cuenca Abela joins us to share the story of his company, Freepik, which started out as an ad-supported search site for free pictures. Today Freepik makes around $100M a year in subscription revenues from their seven hundred and fifty million month unique visitors. For the past two years, Freepik has been leaning heavily into generative AI, and is adding new features, like text-to-video, which he hinted may be coming soon. Freepik hit our radar last year when it acquired the AI upscaling tool Magnific.  Thank you to our sponsor, Zappar! Don't forget to like, share, and follow for more! Follow us on all socials @ThisWeekInXR! https://linktr.ee/thisweekinxr Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hosted by Charlie Fink, with regular voices like Ted Schilowitz and Rony Abovitz, The AI XR Podcast goes beyond the headlines to explore the human stories shaping artificial intelligence and extended reality. This isn't a series of dry tech lectures. Instead, you'll hear unfiltered conversations with the people who were actually in the room-founders of pioneering companies, former executives from giants like Google DeepMind and Meta Reality Labs, and the creative minds behind tools like Unity and Apple Vision Pro. Each episode feels like a candid discussion, pulling back the curtain on how these technologies are built, the real business challenges faced, and their unexpected impacts on entertainment and industry. The podcast thrives on access, featuring interviews with startup CEOs navigating the current landscape, researchers pushing the boundaries of AI, and Hollywood directors applying these tools in new ways. It’s a direct line to the veterans and visionaries defining our digital future. For anyone curious about the convergence of virtual worlds and intelligent machines, this is an essential listen, offering context and clarity from those who have helped build it all. Charlie Fink Productions brings these nuanced talks to life, making complex topics relatable and deeply engaging.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 100

The AI XR Podcast
Podcast Episodes
The AI/XR Podcast February 14th, 2025 ft. Ann Hand, CEO Super League [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 52:42
Our guest this week is Ann Hand, CEO of Super League, a brand agency specializing in game platforms like Roblox and Fortnite. The news this week starts with an ironic twist: first people who are losing jobs to AI are peo…
The AI/XR Podcast February 7th, 2025 ft. Sean Mann, CEO RP1 [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 49:41
Charlie, Ted, and Rony welcome Sean Mann, CEO of RP1, whose Metaverse browser can support hundreds of thousands of unique users in a spatial environment. It's earning week in the tech world and the outlook for 2025, afte…
The AI/XR Podcast January 31st, 2025 [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 37:01
Charlie, Rony & Ted are guestless today. It happens. It was a busy news week. First up, Deepseek. Their model may have been trained on OpenAI. Stealing from the thieves, he called it. Big financing deals we announced thi…
The AI/XR Podcast January 17th, 2025 ft. Ashley Crowder, CEO Vntana [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 53:27
This week the hosts welcome Ashley Crowder, CEO of Vntana, which manages CAD drawings and other 3D assets for companies in industries as diverse as fashion and concrete. The news segment was focused on the imminent shut…
The AI/XR Podcast January 3rd, 2025 ft. Gary Shapiro, CEO of CES [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 53:47
Charlie, Ted, and Rony have a wide-ranging preview of CES 2025 and what to expect from the coming year from Gary Shapiro, CEO of the Consumer Technology Association which owns CES. To be sure, we'll be seeing a lot more…
This Week In XR December 6th, 2024 ft. Michael Murray, CEO, Kopin [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 51:53
This week Charlie and Ted are joined by Michael Murray, CEO of Kopin (NASDQ: KOPN), a leading developer of microdisplay and optical technologies for military and enterprise applications. Meta needs a hit entertainment fr…