After 5½ years, yesterday marked my last day at Meta.
For those who may not know, I joined via the acquisition of my previous company, where we set out to build a continuously-updating 3D model of the world, enabling devices to understand where they are and what’s around them.
Together with @hulahuub, we believed a unified frame of reference was key to unlocking the next generation of spatial computing applications, from augmented reality to robotics. While we may have been early, it's clear the Cambrian explosion is now beginning—driven by general-purpose AI and a growing network of context-rich sensors.
At Meta, we continued that mission with LiveMaps: a visually, semantically, and physically predictive model of the world, collaboratively built by the devices that use it. It’s a bold vision led by @rapideRobot, and I’ve been incredibly lucky to work alongside him, @mingfeiy, @jajuengel, and the broader Surreal team in Reality Labs Research.
Despite a rocky start (we joined in Jan 2020 👀), I’m proud of the impact we had—kickstarting the @meta_aria academic program, and leading open science efforts to accelerate AI and ML research.
I’m especially proud of our work on the Aria Synthetic Environments and Aria Digital Twin datasets, which pushed the envelope for digital twin research and highlighted the importance of both real and simulated data for Spatial AI. Our team’s work on SceneScript demonstrated the first method for auto-regressively predicting the structure of an environment using end-to-end learning—recently extended by SpatialLM: https://t.co/1BAzXuq8yI
Last year, my family and I relocated to Redmond, Seattle, to spend time closer to Reality Labs Research HQ. While there, I had the chance to tick off a career ambition: delivering a “Mother of All Demos” to MZ and the board. This demo will stand among the defining breakthroughs in human-computer interaction and I’m bullish to watch how the company will execute over the next decade.
As for what’s next, my wife and I recently had our second child, and I’m taking some time to reset back in London—recalibrate my sensors, defrag my hard drive. As a colleague put it: “The grass is always greenest where you water it.” I’m looking forward to doing exactly that here in Europe— taking some time to spend with family and reflecting on the next big thing.
If you're a founder, researcher, or operator working at the edge, please ping me a message, I’d love to connect.
LFG! 🚀🇬🇧💪
I first met @taiuti when he was a solo developer in Edinburgh. He was building crazy things with my company's SDK, augmenting the world with city-scale AR. I'm pleased to see him continuing to build crazy things at a whole other level at @reactorworld.
Here's to the crazy ones 🚀
Today Reactor is coming out of stealth. We’ve raised $59M in Seed and Series A funding, led by @lightspeedvp, with participation from @AmplifyPartners, @wndrco, @Sky9Capital, and @FPVventures.
Reactor is the platform for building in the World Model era: the infrastructure that lets developers build with them at global scale for the first time. Stream from a frontier World Model to your app, in real time, all in under 10 lines of code.
World Models represent the next major shift in AI: pixels, audio and actions are generated on the fly, in real-time, in response to user inputs, and to the environment. Every time computing has made a shift from passive to interactive, entire industries appeared that didn't exist before. We're standing in front of such moment again.
Over the last 6 months, we’ve assembled an all-star team with alumni from Apple, Meta, Google, Luma AI, Netflix, and Replicate. We're already partnering with some of the biggest names and labs in the world, and hundreds of developers are already building on Reactor.
The World Model era starts now.
FB Marketplace + AI agents that cut through all the spam and help each person coordinate might be the fastest way to a billion people with their own personal agents
The argument for having ownership over your own data is so much easier when you focus on the utility you gain rather than ideology.
Reasoning over your own data should be permissionless 🦅
Last year, one of my New Year's goals after returning from Seattle was to 'fall back in love with the UK'
Over the last few months there's been a groundswell of optimism, ambition, and momentum, that makes me excited and, dare I say patriotic, for whats ahead
Britmaxxing 🇬🇧🦁
🇬🇧 Most British schoolchildren are taught about Magna Carta.
They are taught it was sealed in twelve fifteen at Runnymede.
They are taught it is the foundation of English liberty.
They are taught it is one of the most important documents in human history.
They are not taught what came next.
They are not taught about the eighty years between twelve fifteen and twelve ninety-five when ordinary Englishmen forced three successive kings to write down, for the first time in any kingdom in medieval Europe, what English law was, what English liberty was, and how an English king must govern.
They are not taught about the Charter of the Forest, which restored the right to graze, gather firewood, and live on common land, and which remained in force for seven hundred and fifty-four years.
They are not taught about the Provisions of Oxford in twelve fifty-eight, often called England's first written constitution, which placed the king under a council of fifteen and required Parliament to meet three times a year.
They are not taught about the Provisions of Westminster in twelve fifty-nine, which subjected the barons themselves to the same law they had forced upon the king.
They are not taught about Simon de Montfort, an earl born in France who died for England, who summoned the first Parliament in English history to include ordinary commoners alongside the great lords.
They are not taught about the Statute of Marlborough in twelve sixty-seven, which is the oldest piece of statute law in the United Kingdom still in force today. ⚖️
Seven hundred and fifty-nine years old.
If you've ever taken a debt to court in England, you've used it. 🏠 If you've ever rented a home, you've been protected by it. 👑 If a creditor can't lawfully drag your possessions into the street to settle what you owe, that's because of a law signed seven hundred and fifty-nine years ago.
They are not taught about the Model Parliament of twelve ninety-five, summoned by Edward the First, which became the shape of every English Parliament since.
Eighty years. Three successive kings. The first written constitution in any kingdom in medieval Europe.
It was not given to them. It was not handed down from God or king or Pope.
✍️ It was written. By Englishmen. For England.
🇬🇧 The British write their own history. They always have.
This one needed more than a thread. The full story is in our video, watch it below 👇
Help us remember who we are. Help us remember every British achievement. 👇🙏
👉 https://t.co/rih7iKwnvf 👈
Be part of us. ☝️🇬🇧
Be Proud Of Us. 🙏🇬🇧
Went to a dinner a few days ago with a bunch of immersive tech founders. There were many jokes about "RIP Metaverse", which struck me as really odd given the breakthroughs recently in genAI. Shows how poorly the term landed, even among practitioners building in the space.
Final submission reminder for our Commission on Minimal-Shot Autonomy — £7k in non-dilutive funding to progress your project.
Judges @TweetEdMiller, @cmericli, and Frederik & Mohamed from Crewline.
Deadline EOD Sunday 10th May.
Real-time World Models are the next AI frontier.
Today, we're taking the first step towards this reality: our early preview lets you experience worlds generated in real-time, running on our global low-latency infrastructure.
Try it now: https://t.co/h0XDYsHcGB
Everyone in the world has to take a private vote by pressing a red or blue button. If more than 50% of people press the blue button, everyone survives. If less than 50% of people press the blue button, only people who pressed the red button survive. Which button would you press?
A great night discussing the many brilliant ways the UK gov is adopting AI.
Hats off to @sotalikesfuture for organising another great event to light the fire of British ambition.
@jamiec_24@matbogus
⚡️EgoVerse is a first-of-its-kind, collaborative ecosystem for human-to-robot learning. The consortium leverages Project Aria to capture high-fidelity, egocentric human data — including 3D hand and head poses — to train next-gen robot manipulation policies.
With over 1,300 hours of data across 2,000+ tasks, EgoVerse is a prime example of how the Aria Research Kit is being used by our partners to accelerate the future of embodied AI.
Learn more:
🔗https://t.co/z5s7kl1hQc
📰 https://t.co/pqH73Jrx0F
Apply for the Aria Research Kit: https://t.co/4QCdyX3DTA
#MachineLearning #Robotics #ProjectAria #EgoVerse #ComputerVision
@simar_kareer , @ryan_punamiya , @RogerQiu_42, @XiongyiCai , @yexelal
@fabienpenso No, decided not to, given the extra attention I'd need to spend to sanitise it for security purposes. Also, part of the value is that I've made it tailored to my needs specifically.
14/
Still Building - scenario modelling, calibration of decisions over time, and integration with Will/estate planning are next.
If you're building something similar or want to compare notes, reply or DM!
/end
13/ Ultimately, AI coding tools have helped me level-up my family's financial security and visibility. I was always frustrated working through intermediaries. With this tool, there is no friction, no barriers, no delays. I have direct access to what I need, whenever I need it, while remaining firmly in the driving seat.
Building it was also fun and addictive. Coding with AI gives the perfect dopamine hit when a feature lands, and the ability to immediately trigger the next one. I'm sure many people will relate to the feeling of 'just one more hit' late into evenings.
Make of that what you will.