Here Comes CES, Swave Photonics Raises $28 Million, More Cinematic AI

Like the holidays that preceded it, CES is inevitable. It happens on the first Monday in January and if you’re not there, you’ll start the year with FOMO, which is why more than 5,000 journalists and analysts are covering the event.

Swave Photonics secures $28.3 million to revolutionize 3D holographic displays. Belgian holographic display maker secures Series A funding to advance its Holographic eXtended Reality (HXR) platform. Swave’s technology provides high-quality 3D holographic images for augmented reality smart glasses and AI-powered heads-up displays. The round was co-led by Imec.xpand and SFPIM Relaunch, with participation from new investors including EIC Fund and Murata Electronics. This funding follows a $10.47 million seed round in 2023. Swave plans to showcase its advances at CES where it received a CES 2025 Innovation Award for World’s First Holographic Display Technology for Augmented Reality.

OpenAI’s shift to for-profit sparks legal and ethical debates Originally established as a non-profit organization in 2015, OpenAI must transition to a for-profit model to attract substantial investment. This decision sparked significant controversy. OpenAI co-founder Elon Musk has requested an injunction to stop the transition, alleging that it deviates from OpenAI’s original mission and raises antitrust concerns. Meta and others also filed briefs opposing OpenAI’s plan.

This week’s notable AI cinematic shorts

This column, formerly titled “This Week in XR,” is also a podcast hosted by this column’s author, Charlie Fink, Ted Schilowitz, former studio executive and co-founder of Red Camera, and Rony Abovitz, founder of Magic Leap. This week our guest is Gary Shapiro, CEO of CES. We can be found on Spotify, iTunesAnd YouTube.

What we read

An objective analysis of XR in 2024 (Skarred Ghost Blog)