Niantic Spatial, Inc. partnered with Rally SF for an evening of robotics demos, technical talks, and candid discussion on the path from simulation to real-world deployment.

First, our founders brought digital mapping to the world. Next, we invented global-scale AR. Now we're building the real-world foundation model for people, AI and robots. We're building for the 80% of economic activity that takes place beyond our screens: robots that lose GPS and drift off course, defense teams with no shared 3D picture of where they operate, facilities where downtime costs millions. Unlike LLMs, which understand language, we build computer-vision models that understand physical space. And unlike generated environments, our models are geometrically accurate and have real-world coordinates - which is what makes physical AI precise and trustworthy. We work across three capabilities for our customers: reconstructing physical spaces as AI-native digital twins using cheap, off-the-shelf cameras; locating and orienting – “localizing” – machines and people within those spaces; and enabling AI to understand and answer questions about the real world.