Hello, friends, and welcome once again. I'm Steve Darling from Proactive here at the Worldwide Broadcast Center in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, as we present another Proactive livestream, this time with ARway.ai. Joining us in just a couple of minutes will be their Chief Product Officer Shadnam Khan, and also their CEO Evan Gappelberg, as we talk about a number of different things. Of course, we always invite your input as well. If you'd like to make a comment or have a question around what we're talking about today, feel free to use that in the chat section, and we'll make sure we pass those along to our guests. Today, as I mentioned, we're with ARway.ai, and we're talking about really the move that has shaken the augmented reality world. A move that was expected, but had taken some time to finally get to fruition.
Introducing Apple Vision Pro. The era of spatial computing is here.
There you have it. Apple came out with their official glasses. As we mentioned, it had been expected for some time, but had taken a little while to get to the point where they finally will be on the market very soon. Let's talk about it and bring in the CEO of ARway, Evan Gappelberg. Evan, it's great to see you. As always, welcome once again.
Thanks, Steve. Great to be back.
Yeah, it really was a quite the announcement, and it was, I mentioned, expected, but it had taken them some time to get to a point where they felt they had, in their minds, perfected it.
Yeah, I mean, we've been talking about Apple's computer vision glasses with you specifically, Steve, going all the way back to 2019. We thought, you know, 2020 was gonna be the year, 2020, 2021, 2022. Finally, 2023 is the year for Apple's entrance into this market, and the world really is kind of changed forever because a spatial computer is the dawn of a new age of computing. Spatial computing, generative AI, these things kind of go hand in hand together. We've been waiting for this moment, building our technology, specifically with ARway's technology, being able to map indoor spaces, create that spatial computing environment, and then populate that map with 3D and augmented reality experiences. I mean, that's what ARway is basically purpose-built for the glasses. We previously announced that we're integrating with Magic Leap, which is great.
We previously announced we're integrating with HoloLens, which is great. Honestly, Steve, nothing gets me more excited than Apple's Vision Pro, because Apple is the dominant tech company on the planet today, and they've spent years building this. You know, Tim Cook came out, and, you know, he literally called this headset revolutionary. The last time we heard that kind of talk was when they announced the iPhone back in, you know, 2008. It's been a long time since they've come out and declared a product revolutionary. Again, it's taken an extensive amount of development time, spanning years. When you think about Apple, they move the market, this is a big deal for the market.
This is a very, very big deal for ARway and for our investors, for sure.
Evan, it certainly isn't cheap. I mean, we're talking just under $4,000 for cost of it. I think people have to realize that this particular version, when they always come out with the very first one, it's the one that has all the bells and all the whistles. It may not be the one that's gonna be, you know, under my 12-year-old's Christmas tree come December, but certainly there will be versions of it, like there was the iPhone. How important is it that the platform that you're talking about, ARway, can match for everything? Is that the key to how it works?
Well, I mean, all these technologies, when they come out initially, are very expensive. I mean, I remember when the VCR first came out, very few families can actually afford a VCR. I mean every piece of new tech is always going to be the most expensive. I remember when flat screen TVs, you know, right, the big ones were $10,000, and I was like, "Jesus, you know, I'm gonna wait a couple years." This is $3,500. The reality is, Steve, is that this is not for the consumer right now. It's primarily for enterprise clients, and that's actually where ARway shines. ARway is an enterprise platform. It's exclusively an enterprise solution. You know, we're dealing with some very big names, which we'll get into in a minute.
These glasses, the Apple's glasses, essentially are going to be used, in my view, primarily by enterprise customers. What this does in the early days is it really gives a jolt of adrenaline to the entire augmented reality ecosystem, to the entire spatial computing ecosystem, to the entire really, you know, glasses ecosystem. It really gives this jolt of just adrenaline. You know, when Apple steps into a market, every single CTO of every single company sits up and takes notice and says, "What's this about?" Right? Then it becomes: Well, what am I gonna do with these glasses?
That's again, where ARway shines, because we essentially have a platform that's purpose-built for these glasses, and it's going to be, I think, just a very, very exciting couple of years for ARway and for our investors, because our platform works extremely well with all these glasses.
Yeah. You mentioned enterprise, Evan. Can you sort of give, so people understand, a potential of where you see the biggest uptick in glasses like this, especially when it's concerned to ARway and how that platform will aid in that? Where do you see the biggest opportunity there?
I mean, let's be clear. The glasses are gonna take years to become as prevalent as the phones, right? For today, our enterprise customers are primarily, you know, it's like 80/20, relying on the phones, 20% use the glasses, right? You would use the glasses in, let's say, a warehouse type of environment, where, you know, or training type of environment, right? That's essentially what the glasses will be used for. You know, if you think of all the warehouse employees that work for Amazon, they all wear, you know, goggle, basically safety glasses.
Yeah.
Those can be replaced by computer vision glasses that turn the entire warehouse into a spatially aware space, where when it comes to, you know, either communicating with somebody at a distance, it all happens in this heads-up display. When it comes to finding a package or a product, the heads-up display can direct them. They don't have to ask for directions. Everything becomes seamless, frictionless, super easy. If you think of entertainment, you know, Disney+ is now going to be one of the services that will be available on the device. It does extend, you know, beyond enterprise into people's homes, you know, where you could be watching movies. For us, we're primarily an enterprise platform, when you think of ARway, it's malls, hospitals, universities, those are enterprise customers.
Warehouse, you know, operators, which we're gonna get into in a minute and get a little more granular on some of these names. For us, these enterprise customers are key because, A, they have the deep pockets, right? Like, you know-
Yeah.
ARway is not a cheap piece of technology to build, it's not something that's low priced. You know, the cost for just a pilot program is five figures, you know, $10,000, roughly. Then once you move into an actual rollout, we're talking hundreds of thousands of dollars annually for the ARway platform. If you think about the glasses at $3,500, they're actually cheap relative to, you know, the ARway platform, right? It all comes down to use cases and productivity. Really, Steve, I just wanna highlight that word. Productivity is what is being driven forward at a breakneck pace.
Productivity is what gets these enterprise customers to the table to sign up for either the Vision Pro from Apple or the ARway platform from ARway. They're looking for productivity enhancements. They want their workers to be more productive. When you look at AI, what's driving this mania? Productivity. That's the key, right? You know, everything used to be very labor intensive in this world. If you go back, you know, 200 years, everybody was farming, right? Now, you have these, you know, basically machines that are, you know, not even driven by farmers. A lot of times it's just the GPS, you know, like robo farming basically happening.
Yeah.
That. Right? Productivity's gone up, which has allowed, you know, all of us to continue to procreate and populate the planet. If you look at businesses, they also need productivity enhancements. Really, the bottom line, Steve, is that everything that we're doing increases the productivity of our enterprise customers. Everything Apple's doing, at least in this phase, other than the entertainment aspect, is increasing productivity.
Yeah.
That's what's driving this.
I can tell you, Evan, we've come a long way from, when we had to go to the 7-Eleven to get your 3D glasses to watch The Three Stooges. There you have it. It's been a big change in the world, so to speak.
Yeah.
Let's bring in, your Chief Product Officer, Shadnam Khan, to the conversation as well. I know he's gonna present some stuff in just a second, but before we do that, Shadnam, I just wanna get your reaction. I know you've taken a look at this, quite extensively, but what was your initial thought on Apple's glasses?
The first thing is, when Apple enters a market, as Evan said, we are going to receive improved hardware on an annual or even twice-a-year basis, right? This is just the beginning. We already saw or started integrating with a bunch of hardware sets. Apple's announced hardware is top of class as it stands, and it's only going to improve. It mirrors what we're seeing in the market with advanced chipsets, with NVIDIA, what we're seeing with camera technology in the latest cell phones. Every road like, leads to green for ARway at the end of the day. It's like wide open opportunity, and our technology is perfectly compliant for headset devices like this.
All right. Well, I know you wanna talk a bit more about some things on ARway. We'll let you take over for a little bit. We'll come back and have some more conversations as well as we go through this. I know you're gonna share your screen. We'll talk a bit more about ARway and what's been going on.
Absolutely. I believe Evan will speak a little bit about the smart glasses market, then I'll get started. If we can bring that screen up. Thank you.
Yeah. I'm just, you know, trying to point out, I'm trying to point, you know, like, hey, take a look at this graphic. What do we see? We see the adoption of AI glasses ramping up, just like smartphones ramped up, going back, you know, to 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010. You could see, you know, this kind of gradual ramp. Then it just explodes. The same thing is happening now with augmented reality glasses. I believe that it's actually in the explosion stage. That is the next generation of computing. I mean, spatial computing is not something most people are familiar with. You know, at the end of the day, we've been, at ARway, talking about this spatial computing revolution for the last two years, really.
We see it as an extremely compelling investment opportunity. We see ARway really as the leading provider of advanced augmented reality, navigation, and mapping solutions for indoor spaces. We think our cutting-edge technology really it unlocks this immense potential within the spatial computing market. You know, we've looked and done some research, and the spatial computing/augmented reality market is expected to hit $140 billion over the next three years. Spatial computing is gonna play a pivotal role in this growth and demand for context-aware experiences, which is what ARway really provides, stands at the forefront and offers solutions for enhanced user engagement, enhanced productivity, enhanced efficiencies, and you know, of course, gamification. It's a very unique time, Steve.
The value prop really is pretty crystal clear when you look at this image, where you can see the growth, and you think about the glasses replacing the phone. I mean, that's what's happening, right? That your phone are gonna basically be something you wear as a pair of computer vision glasses. We've talked about it, but the day has finally dawned. We're finally seeing Apple enter this space and, you know, just hang on, 'cause it's gonna be a pretty wild ride over the next couple of years between AI and spatial computing, and, you know, wearing a pair of computer glasses.
I think also the interesting part about this is. You're right, I think that's the way the world's going. I personally would not wanna wear them all the time, just something like, it's just 'cause I'm not used to them. Also, I think we're looking, harkening back to the cellular, the first iterations of them, the old, the clunky, the big, all that.
Yeah.
These look a little, a lot different. They looked a lot more sleek, a lot more of a unique design.
Well, let me ask you a question, Steve.
Yeah.
Do you wear corrective lens glasses, just like regular glasses, for reading...
No.
or for driving?
No.
For anything? No.
No.
Okay.
Sun glasses, yeah.
Okay. You're one of the very, very, you know, few adults that don't wear glasses.
Yeah.
Most people, you know.
Not saying I will in the next couple of years, I'm just saying.
Most people wear glasses.
Yeah.
What is not really talked about much, but is part of this, is that these computer vision glasses will correct people's vision, so that they will put on these computer vision glasses. Maybe, you know, they're not thinking about it the way I'm thinking about it, or the way Shadnam's thinking about it, but they'll start thinking about it very differently when we say, "Hey, put these on," and all of a sudden, you know, you got your vision corrected. Not only that, you get your phone, you get your chat, you get your, you know, video of a movie, you know, every... It's, it's all in one. It also, you know, tracks your glucose levels, it tracks your health, your heartbeat. You know, your doctor will know if something happens to you. It's got a whole, medical side to it.
It's more than just, you know, enterprise. It goes way beyond that. It turns into this all-in-one kind of computer that becomes linked to your body, to your health, you know, to your wealth, because you'll probably be able to track your stocks in your glasses as well, to the weather, you know, to your vision. It's much, much more. It's gonna be very, very convenient. Anybody that says that, I'm not gonna wear one, I'm gonna check back in with you in a couple of years. We'll see, Steve.
That's always the way. That's always the way. You know, it's adoption, and, you know, when I got the iPhone, it was the complete opposite. I was like: This is the greatest thing I've ever seen, type thing. You're right, it combines the iPhone, the Apple Watch, the glasses. I mean, everything is-
Yes
integrated together. Let's talk about the platform itself, and you mentioned... How will it work for people who are, you know, if I'm an enterprise client and I wanna take ARway, and I wanna use it within that glasses, tell me, take me through the process of what sort of company is gonna be doing now in order to take advantage of the opportunity here?
Shadnam , maybe now is a good time for you to kind of go into what we've been working on at ARway and why this, you know, spatial computing platform, the Vision Pro from Apple, is so transformative for the industry.
Perfect. Thank you, Evan. Gonna bring up my screen in a second. You know, ARway, just for a quick recap, is a spatial computing platform for AR experiences and wayfinding, as we've been speaking to. I'm going to speak a little bit about spatial computing at a very high level, just so we understand where ARway fits in. To quote Tim Cook, he said, "Just as the Mac introduced us to personal computing, and the iPhone introduced us to mobile computing, Apple Vision Pro introduces us to spatial computing." This is not a new concept for ARway, specifically, and other companies as well. HoloLens, Magic Leap, Meta and Oculus, Vuzix, Qualcomm, and many others have been working towards this vision for decades. The innovations in hardware and increased computing power is now enabling this vision.
What do we mean at a very high level, what do we mean by spatial computing? Spatial computing is when digital experiences, more particularly augmented reality experiences, persist in the real world across space, time, and devices. The physical world is now a canvas for your digital experiences, extending beyond your computer screens. You're no longer limited to a two-dimensional view. As you can see from the screenshot on the left, this is from Apple's keynote speech by Tim Cook. You're interacting with digital content in your own space and no longer limited by your screens. The calculation of the physical distance among humans, places, digital objects, and physical objects is a core enabler of spatial computing. Just imagine the experience of playing baseball.
When you're trying to hit a pitch, you're running billions of calculations in your brain in milliseconds to estimate the speed, the depth, the distance, that the ball is coming towards you to make a good hit, right? Spatial computing is essentially allowing you, allowing the computers to compute those calculations and improve your sense perception in environments that are real, right? Timing is important. It needs to be real time, it needs to be on-site, it also needs to have a virtual component with remote accessibility. Devices is key. Apple Vision Pro is, you know, the latest device in the market, devices, again, are the vessel of interaction. You need true cross-platform compatibility across devices for all of these experiences to work seamlessly.
A lot of information was shared when we founded, you know, ARway with this. The spatial computing market is comprised of multiple technologies, these are all exponential technologies. Artificial intelligence for running those calculations, spatial databases, advanced chipsets, headsets, LiDAR scanners. It's a whole gamut of things that enables spatial computing at the end of the day, right? Not even one, not even one to five companies will be able to solve all challenges in this industry for this $1 trillion market cap to be realized. It's a compounded annual growth rate of 50%, more than 50% for this market. It's a flourishing industry, the more entrants and the more hardware and more innovations, the faster we realize this.
Where does ARway really fit in, and how do we work with our clients and the market in general, right? All XR headsets, AR, VR, mixed reality, as well as smart glasses, as well as mobile phones of today, face some common challenges in GPS-devoid environments. There is no indoor navigation system that is truly well accepted and adopted worldwide. Glasses will face the same problem, but that problem will be compounded, again, because the glasses act as a screen right on in front of your face. You know, if you have any latency issues, if you have any issues around positioning, it's a very, very bad user experience, right? Like, ARway becomes more and more important with more advanced devices at the end of the day. Some of the key problems that we solve, right?
Location persistence, which means having a perception of the space around you, is a very difficult challenge, with or without the retrofitting or of expensive hardware like beacon technologies, ultra-wideband, Wi-Fi, and other RFID chips and other devices, right? Even with those devices, location persistence is a challenge. There is another challenge around instant localization and cross-platform collaboration across devices. We solved that by our no hardware, no code, AI-powered indoor positioning and navigation system. ARway, at its core, is a spatial computing platform that enables indoor navigation. We have the core technologies that allows the positioning and tracking of these devices indoors. Once you are able to track, you know, where the device is, you can render AR experiences against the positioning of the device. That is what our core patent-pending technology is, right?
We create a digital environment of a physical world and be populated with content that you can see through these cell phones and glasses.
Shadnam, can I ask you a quick question on that? You talked a bit earlier about latency. Can you talk what that means when you say ARway solves that problem for someone when you have latency when they're using the glass. Can you sort of take us through that again?
A couple of things. The first thing is on the user experience side, if in your real world, Like, I'll use the baseball example again. In the real world, if a baseball is coming to you at 100 km per hour, you need to make sure that the glasses you're wearing is accurately reflecting that speed in the vision it's showing you at the end.
Right.
Right, and the-
Walking down a street or something, and there's a pole in front of you wanna know that the pole's, you know, 3 f t, not 4 ft .
Exactly.
Yeah.
Exactly. Like, that rendering is very key, ARway is AI-powered to constantly learn and create contextual awareness of the space around it, right? For end users, what ARway is allowing, is it's allowing the world you see in your two-dimensional mobile devices to come out of the box into your own space, slot into fixed positions in the real world, and remain anchored to that space, not just for one user, but for all users within that space. With that combination, it provides, you know, it provides value-added, interactive context and usage of the space to all users, regardless of the device, through features like navigation, spatials, and information overlays.
Since GPS and other intrusive systems are unable to reach indoor spaces, which are often privately owned, big tech has been unable to exploit them with pop-up ads, banners, digital marketing, and so on. ARway allows the property owner to control the narrative, visitor experience, employee experience, boost productivity, as well as monetize the airspace if it's a publicly facing property, right? Early adopters see ARway as a tool to increase the value of their properties by providing AR- as- a-S ervice, as a tool to enhance the visitor, customer, and employee experience and productivity. They also glean rich location intelligence, which is real-time data of user behavior in their properties. After all, they're the ones enabling the spatial computers to function in their properties.
Mm.
Right? If you see the image on the left, that's again from Apple's experience. You'll see this one-to-one experience of someone sitting in their home and seeing the screen through their glasses. What ARway does is it makes your entire property, your entire property into multiple screens, and it makes those screens anchored to that location, so for multiple collaboration and multiple users.
I would just add that, you know, you know, if you could imagine, as Shadnam saying, you know, you're sitting on a couch in this example from Apple and watching a screen, just like, you know, you could be watching a screen in your living room. With ARway, you walk through, let's say, a public indoor space, there are screens everywhere, floating. They're not really, you know. Right? You're seeing these screens that have been populated with content through the ARway platform, they're all live simultaneously from multiple, you know, could be thousands, tens of thousands of users, they're all seeing it from a different vantage point, right?
They're all seeing it from their vantage point, but they're all seeing the same, content, but maybe it, you know, it's triggering at different times and different angles. All that is being controlled by ARway.
Mm.
Extremely powerful stuff, Steve.
Yeah. The hardware manufacturers don't intend to solve all of these problems.
Oh, Shadnam, we just lost you for a second, but you're good now. Go ahead.
Yeah, yeah. I was just saying, you know, big technology strategy has always been to build best-in-class gadgets and ask developers what they think and what can you do with it, right? Apple's or Apple or Microsoft or any other company will always provide all these latest and greatest gadgets, but it's up to developers like ARway to bring more context to these things.
Essentially, Steve, for the next couple of months, we're gonna be developing. Actually, ARway already works within the Apple ecosystem, but now with the glasses, that's a new piece of hardware that Apple has launched. We're already on the, you know, the iPhone, so we're just gonna now build ARway's technology into the Vision Pro glasses. That's really what we're talking about, right? We have another extension for our platform. Today, it's the phones and the glasses are, you know, we're developing on the glasses for HoloLens, as we discussed, Magic Leap, and now Apple's Vision Pro. It really just means that we're bleeding edge. Anything new that comes out ARway is part of that story, part of that ecosystem.
The thing that's so unique about it, though, is that we're not like a typical product that you might see on the Vision Pro glasses, like a game. We're a platform that uses all this tech that Apple has spent tens of billions of dollars building into this piece of magical equipment that they're calling Vision Pro, right? That has, I don't know how many cameras and, you know, machine learning and, you know, LiDAR and AI. I mean, the thing is, you know, off the charts when it comes to how much tech they've loaded into it. All that is exactly what ARway is best suited for.
Mm-hmm.
That's the magical story here, is that, you know, ARway just plugs right in to the Vision Pro glasses and allows our technology to shine like never before. That's really exciting for me and I'm sure for Shadnam.
Yeah. I'm going to go into a little bit of detail on how exactly we do this. We have one command and control center, which is our Web Creator Studio, which essentially integrates and allows you to publish into all these devices, right? We have a mobile app that's used to create the 3D digital twins of your, of your property and also demo some of the experiences, but the true magic happens with our software development kit. Today, our software development kit is open for all Android and iOS developers. We're extending our SDK for apps on Microsoft's HoloLens, Vision Pro, and Magic Leap, as Evan was saying.
Our Web Creator Studio, again, to repeat, is where you create all these experiences, these contextually aware applications, and then you publish through the SDK, either on a purely white label app, or you take the best of our technology and integrate it with your existing app. I do wanna highlight one key point here, right? With Vision Pro and all these devices coming to the market, we're used to using our applications in two dimensions, right? Almost all applications will now start thinking about: Well, how does my app render in the Vision Pro? Like, I know exactly what it looks like in the mobile app. I know the value prop, but what does it look like in Vision Pro? Think of using Teams or Figma or something like that.
The ARwayKit SDK is custom built for them to take that technology and make it spatially aware, make it spatial computing platform compliant. That is the true magic of packaging our best technology into an SDK and distributing with our clients. Our clients are interested in that. They will be using our portal to create those experiences, but their workers, their employees, their customers, their visitors, are using a multitude of devices. What we essentially do is allow that cross-platform experience layer for those users on their site, regardless of what device they're using.
Hmm.
A little bit on the technology roadmap before I go on to some of our pilots is, we've achieved significant milestones in Q2 with our technology landscape. We're filing multiple patents. We're close to filing more, more patents on our proprietary technologies around spatial awareness. We're releasing intelligent routing, and then we're going to move on to multiple buildings and multiple floors and more collaboration tools across devices. As you see within this roadmap, a HoloLens and a Magic Leap integration, is imminent, and the Apple Vision Pro has general availability in Q1 2024. Since we're already compliant, we already have an app, we're very confident of going to market with Apple Vision Pro with existing applications that is powered by ARway.
Moving forward, I know we last did this a couple of months back, we have again, had an increased user base and then trials and pilots running. We have about more than 2,500 active users across 31 pilots and trials, so more than 50, 60 users or 500 users per pilot who are actively testing ARway in their properties and systems. These range from industries such as shopping, mall and retail, airports and transportation depots, universities, hospitals, manufacturing and logistics, consumer product goods, public sector and more, right? The, the true message is, like, the use cases, even within navigation, are limitless. Our customers are devising their own use cases. They're fusing navigation with advanced workflow management tools, right? That's, again, the power of the SDK.
Like, they're really making our base ARway technology their own and making it fit their business context. Again, driving more productivity, user experience, visitor experience at the end of the day. I'm going to leave this slide up for more comments from you, Steve and Evan.
... Just a couple of quick thoughts on my part, a couple of quick questions, actually, on my part about this. How you know, we mentioned the glasses aren't coming out till 2024. How important, Evan and Shadnam, are these trials and these pilots, especially leading up to the second half of 2023?
I'll just answer that the Microsoft's glasses are already in market, the HoloLens.
Yeah.
Magic Leap's already in market. Those are the glasses that we will start to monetize off of in 2023. In 2024 and beyond, we will monetize off of Apple's Vision Pro glasses. as I mentioned earlier, just the fact that Apple has entered the market is an adrenaline rush. It's, you know, it just makes everybody much more excited and much more interested in trying it out. you know, a lot of the customers today that we're talking to are agnostic in when it comes to which platform. They just want it to work. They're not really that concerned whether it's Apple glasses, Microsoft glasses, or even Magic Leap. from our standpoint, the phone today is the main piece of hardware that things are happening on.
You know, that's where you have this massive installed base of users, but the glasses are rapidly becoming the next piece of hardware. You know, that's just perfect timing for us, as I mentioned, because ARway is really purpose-built for the glasses. Shadnam can get into maybe some more of the specifics on the customers that we're talking with and the use cases. You could see, you know, there's some very big names here: the Government of Canada, Verizon, the University of Toronto, Westfield Mall. You know, these are very local. These are companies that are paying us money to work with us on pilot programs to test this new technology out, the ARway technology, which we only launched again in, you know, really October, November of 2022, right?
It's only like six, seven months in market. They're paying us for these pilot programs, and then they're going to convert into these six-figure, multi-year business contracts, and we think that is going to happen in 2023, the second half, which we're about to be entering into.
Yeah. Shadnam, what kind of responses are you getting back? What sort of feedback are you hearing?
I'll speak to one of the most interesting pilots that we're running with a, I can't name who for various reasons, but it's a $20 million a year problem that they're solving with headsets, with glasses, and it's in the region of field services. This company has a huge issue of field service workers going into a site and number one, not going to the right place where they need to solve the problem. Second, identify the problem, you know, based on years and years of history of solving similar problems. Secondly, getting guided instructions, lots of step instructions on how to solve that exact problem, in a telecommunication site, let's say, in a construction site, let's say. The glasses are essentially allowing them hands-free capabilities.
It's allowing the operations manager who's sitting with our command and control center to relay augmented reality, real-time information to the field worker to solve that specific problem. They're also building AI-driven workflows to give guidance and recommendations to the field service worker, based on thousands and thousands of you know, days of data on how those previous problems were fixed. They're building responsive, you know, overall responsive systems with ARway as the experience layer for.
Yeah.
For you know, to reach that end goal.
Yeah. In case anyone missed it, what, you know, Shadnam opened up, he basically said it's a $20 million annual cost to this company. They lose $20 million a year. They're trying to solve the problem with ARway, which means if you know, sell this, if we sell this to them, it's not going to be for a small amount of money, it's going to be for millions of dollars because it'll save them $20 million, even if they pay us $5 million. It's a grand slam for them. That's one use case, but that's almost something very unique, Shadnam. Maybe you could point to something that is more of the common use case. I think that's what Steve-
Mm-hmm.
Was kind of, you know, asking.
Yeah. A very common one we're seeing is with shopping malls. Shopping malls are constantly trying to attract and retain more customers and users.
Mm-hmm.
ARway gives them a few opportunities. Number one, they have advanced loyalty programs in the form of points, in the form of goodies you can exchange based on specific behavior you take. The ARway system, specifically the wayfinding as well as the location intelligence, allows them on a greater dimension to their loyalty management program. Through scavenger hunts, by collecting points, and going to specific stores at specific hours.
Right.
It adds on to the loyalty programs that they already have and allows them to retain more customers and have more foot traffic.
Yeah.
At the same time, they're selling off these new services and new products. to their tenants as marketing opportunities. They're looking at ways where the ARway platform is self-funded by sponsorship and advertising and marketing revenue from their tenants.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, think about it like this: You go shopping, you know there's some kind of a sale going on, but you just don't know what it is, and they rarely just tell you. If you're using the ARway technology and you go to a mall, all the sales that are going on across, you know, every store and every nook and cranny of the mall will pop up on virtual screen, you know, essentially in your space. You'll be able to tap on it. The coupon will automatically download to your phone. You'll walk up to the counter, scan the QR code. It'll be frictionless, it'll be seamless, and it'll create a tremendous amount of value for the mall operator and these businesses, as Shadnam said.
They want this because it allows them to advertise on demand, right? You know, at that point where the person's looking to make a purchase, you know, offering them a little discount could be the difference between them walking into the store and buying something or just continuing to walk past your store. There's a tremendous amount of value there. You know, it's not just malls, it's malls, there's a number of universities that wanna use this for their students to guide them around the campus. As Shadnam mentioned, training. You know, there's just so many different use cases for this technology, it is quite mind-boggling. I mean, there's, as we mentioned, the Government of Canada, there's a military use case, there's museums, which we've talked about a few times on the show.
There's all these pilot programs going on, Steve, and they're going to start to turn into these longer term contracts, as I mentioned, in the second half of this year. We're really just scratching the surface because again, as these computer vision glasses start to become more of a thing that we see.
Yeah.
in the market, there's gonna be more and more and more use cases and more and more demand. We're really just at the beginning of this growth curve.
Okay, I wanna include a couple of questions here, 'cause there are some ones that, about stuff that you just talked about, Evan, specifically. Michelle wants to know: Can you comment any further about Ryerson?
Ryerson, you know, we have a relationship with Ryerson. They, I think they changed their name, by the way, that's another story. Ryerson, right now is using our technology for their for the science labs, for the students. That's really where it's at right now.
Okay. They're called the Toronto Metropolitan University, just so you're aware of that.
Yeah. Okay.
Now, we talked obviously about malls, Mark has a question: Do you guys just pay like the Westfield, if they adopt ARway like they have so far, will others follow suit to keep up with the Joneses, so to speak? Is that something that you see happening in this type of industry?
Absolutely. In fact, I see a time in the not-too-distant future where every single mall, if they're, you know, Look, as time goes on, I don't even know if malls are going to exist as they exist today. From my perspective, in the next, you know, 15 years or so, all shopping is gonna essentially pivot to online shopping. Assuming malls morph into something else, right? Where maybe it is this experiential place where you go and, you know, you're wearing some kind of computer glasses, there's no question that the ARway platform will be front and center because, you know, it could end up being your entertainment, your shopping, all in one.
Okay, got it. Shadnam, do you want to talk about any of that as well?
I did wanna mention just one more thing with universities, because this is a use case that's coming up time and again with us, and this is one of accessibility.
Mm.
University campuses, not always are, you know, designed with growth in mind, so a lot of universities developed haphazardly. Accessibility and paths for wheelchair accessible routes is one of the main reasons why a lot of these multi-campus, multi-building universities are looking at ARway. A blue dot navigation just doesn't work for them, right? The blue dot just doesn't. You know, similar to the Google Maps experience, it doesn't tell you which route is wheelchair accessible or not. In a lot of cases, and the main use case we're seeing with a bunch of our universities in pilots right now, is just a couple of flight of stairs makes, you know, a simple path for someone who's disabled completely inaccessible.
Absolutely.
They might have to take a much larger route across multiple buildings to reach the next accessible elevator to get to their destination. With augmented reality technology, which is spatially aware and based on digital twins, you have a really good understanding of what routes to take versus what not to take.
Okay.
It's not based on Bluetooth tracking or blue dots per se. It's real augmented reality wayfinding.
Okay. Let's go to another question. This one comes from the History Book Review, so you take it for what it is. Would you ever make an agreement with someone like a Magic Leap, a HoloLens, Apple Vision, whatever it is? To me, I'm like, you wanna play in all the sandboxes, right? I mean, the thing about making deals is that you become solely with that company. Am I on the right track here, or am I a little bit off?
Yeah. Yeah, well, I mean, look, his question really talks about this becoming a standard piece of technology.
Yeah.
That's essentially built in. Yeah, I mean, look, the wayfinding on your phone is built in. Wayfinding in your car, they all come with some kind of, you know, navigation system. The only thing that's missing today is indoor wayfinding. Yeah, I do believe that there's a very strong possibility that one of these platforms wants this technology just to be standard in their system as, you know, just like you have the weather pre-built into your phone when you get your phone, you have a navigation capability pre-built in for enterprise customers for sure. Yeah.
Yeah. Okay, that makes a lot of sense now, the way that question goes. Okay, I've got another question coming in here. Let me see this one. This is from Assad: In the sewer industry, our contractors have problems locating the correct sewer to complete their scans. Can this technology be used with outdoor navigation to tackle this problem? I think you talked about that a tiny bit earlier, just about not relying on GPS, correct?
Yeah. Yeah, it can do both. I mean, it could integrate. You could have, you know, your technology for GPS and then, you know, for outdoors if you want to, and then, you know, you go below ground with the sewer system, you scan a QR code, and all of a sudden now you're in the ARway solution. It can seamlessly work, it plays well with the existing tech that's out there. Absolutely, absolutely.
Okay. All right, we're just closing in on just a few minutes left here, so I thought I'd give an opportunity for Shadman to have a few more thoughts as we close off here before we give Evan the final word on this. Some thoughts, Shadman, on just where are the company's at and where you see the future heading in the next six months to a year?
Yeah, absolutely, Steve. We are at that inflection point where the pilots are starting to go into use cases with real users in their property. They've internally tested it out. It's about rolling it out to a larger user group and getting unit testing in place. From a business perspective, that just means, you know, with ARway, we're gonna see more and more of these contracts rolling. Another thing I do wanna mention is, we are integrating with existing ecosystems with these pilots. If you think of it this way, we are actually co-creating a brand new product with our customers when we run these pilots. There is a lot of interest beyond the pilots on integrating ARway's technology in all these devices.
You know, before, you know, any technology really takes off, there has to be a few headwinds. With the glasses and other devices and advanced sensors and advanced devices out there, like the headwinds are in place for ARway to succeed at the end of the day.
All right. Go ahead, Shadman.
The last thing I do wanna mention is that the user experience that you kind of get with these sort of platforms is somewhat unheard of. You know, when Tim Cook mentioned, introduced Vision Pro, his main messaging was around: You have not seen anything like this. We get to live that every day with our customers. We do a demo, they're like, "Wow!" Mind blown. We go and do a pilot, and we do a trial, their users are like, "Wow, what are all these things we can do?" This opens up a whole set of use cases. There's a lot of internal excitement with the endless opportunities and possibilities and use cases. We're at that stage, we're cutting down all those ideas into actionable use cases that have an ROI attached to it, right?
It's exciting time, not just for the industry, it's exciting time for ARway as well as our investors. We are a part of this large evolution. I wouldn't call this a revolution. It's an evolution that I think Evan founded Nextech3D.AI with in the first place.
All right, Shadman, thank you so much. Great to see you again. We look forward to our next conversation with you, okay?
Thank you.
All right, there's Shadnam Khan, the Chief Product Officer for ARway. Evan, I'll give it to you. Final thoughts, my friend.
Thank you. You know, when investors think about ARway, they should think about the ground floor opportunity that it provides them for investing in spatial computing. I mean, that's what Apple's computer vision glasses, Vision Pro, is purpose-built for. If you think about spatial computing, it's poised right now, and it's happening now it's really redefining the future of computing. It's merging, the virtual worlds of, you know, augmented reality and the physical worlds that we live in today in a very transformative way. ARway's positioned as a leader in these early days. It's a pioneer, it's a leader. It provides advanced augmented reality, navigation, mapping solutions, and really is a very, very compelling investment opportunity, which is why I am invested in ARway.
If you think about, you know, what Shadman was saying, the vast market potential, the unique value prop, the diverse industry applications, the strategic partnerships, the focus on innovation and scale, all those things are in place. ARway is positioned as a public company where investors can really capitalize on the spatial computing, and I'm gonna call it a revolution, you know, because, yeah, it's an evolution, but I see it as part of the revolution that happens with technology. From my perspective, it really is that ground floor opportunity where, hey, you could buy Apple and invest in spatial computing, or you could buy ARway and invest in spatial computing. Obviously, as spatial computing takes off, you know, ARway could go up, you know, 100x.
That's not gonna happen, so quickly with Apple. That's kind of, what I see, Steve, from my position.
All right, we'll leave it there. Evan, thank you so much. Great to see you again, and we'll talk again soon, okay?
Thank you, Steve.
All right, there's Evan Gappelberg. He's the CEO of ARway. Thank you. I hope you enjoyed our conversation on Apple's Vision Pro glasses and how ARway fits into that, and really what is, as Evan mentioned, the revolution or evolution, if you like, of where technology is going. I'm Steve Darling from Vancouver. Thank you so much for joining us on another Proactive live stream event. We'll see you in the future.