July 9, 2025 • 9 mins
In this episode, AREA Executive Director Mark Sage chats with Alicia Caputo, CEO of Avrio Analytics and Founder of SpaXial, a startup that produces a 3D development environment.
Alicia shares how her team is redefining enterprise AR by leveraging AI to drive tangible business outcomes. With roots in public safety and defense, SpaXial’s technology integrates real-time data into 3D environments—enabling decision-makers to interact with critical information spatially and intuitively. From situational awareness in smart cities to mission-critical planning, Alicia emphasizes that AR isn’t just about augmentation—it’s about action. She also dives into the challenges of scaling AR solutions in traditionally risk-averse sectors and how SpaXial addresses them through modular, standards-based platforms.
A passionate advocate for cross-industry collaboration, Alicia explains why Avrio Analytics joined the AREA and what the ecosystem must do to move from prototypes to production. This is a must-listen for anyone building AR to solve high-stakes problems. Sign up for the beta at SpaXial.ai. Image from SpaXial.ai. Please visit the AREA.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:09):
Hello everybody. Mark Sage,
Executive Director of theAR for Enterprise Alliance,
or better known as the AREA. Andwelcome to our latest Fireside Chat!
Fireside Chats are talking to some ofthe industry experts from both companies
that deploying the technology toproviders of hardware and software
university educational experts as well.
(00:31):
So today we've got Aliciafrom well Avrio Analytics,
but a new interesting piece of workthat you're doing called SpaXial.
.Alicia, welcome again. I know I've hadthe pleasure of speaking to you before,
but this is a very exciting kind ofcompany and idea you've been working on.
So if you're okay,let's crack straight in.
(00:52):
Tell us a little bit about what SpaXialis and what specific problem you're
trying to solve and you started to developthis kind of capability and company.
Perfect. Yes, thank youfor having me, Mark.
I appreciate the opportunity to comeand talk about what we're doing next.
And this is really excitingfor us because of, as you know,
we've been in the industryfor quite a while.
We actually built this tool becauseof a problem that we had had
(01:15):
SpaXial, so it's S-P-A-X-I-A-L.
So "spatial" with an X.
We are focusing on building an AI codingassistant that specifically works for
3D workflows. So it makes3D environments smarter.
You're able to edit building blocks andthe AI can actually understand just like
code. And so what wefound the problem was,
(01:37):
is that spatial developmentin 3D is very messy.
It's difficult, it's time consuming.
That really held upabout 70% of our time was
focused on spatial developmentand spatial recognition for our
training that we did at Avrio.
And so what we did is during that weworked on and we created this tool to
(02:01):
really help us scale this piece so thatinstead of manually having to adapt
every environment,
we could write something that couldthen be able to test in hundreds of
thousands of environments with a matterof minutes instead of having to manually
code each of those environments. Andso it makes it not only so much faster,
but it was able for us tostreamline a lot of that process.
(02:25):
And so during that, we talked tomore and more people in the industry,
whether they were in training orgaming was huge, or even in robotics,
they all had the same problem of thesemanual scaling of the environments.
And we said, well, this tool is somethingthat can go through any 3D developer.
And so we decided to launch that.
We have a kind of an alpha beta thatwe're using for a number of our design
(02:49):
partners. We have some greatpartners in there like AWS, HTC,
Pico and a lot of indiestudios, gaming, robotics,
and they're really giving us thefeedback that we need to help grow this
product.
It's amazing.
So I know you on behalf of the AREAdid that amazing piece of work on a
low-code, no-code platform, so itkind of fits into that a little bit.
(03:12):
I also know many companies thatstart on their XR journey in their
kind of find that this isone of the biggest issues.
Maybe can you talk a little bit aboutthat? You mentioned the 70% saving,
but what kind of other thingsis SpaXial allowing you to do?
Yeah, so exactly right.
We definitely saw a huge gapand from what we were doing
(03:35):
as far as the skill level thatwe needed to have these sort
of environments. And sowhat we saw on our side,
as I mentioned,
70% of what we found wassavings on our budget.
It took us,
it actually cut our time in halfusing the code to develop and use this
(03:56):
tool. And that's why we reallyfound it valuable. On our side,
there's about 40% what we found isa premium for experts that develop
in 3D environments.
And so this really kind of opens upthat entry point for people to get
into XR.
Which is kind of a little bit mynext question, who is the ideal user?
(04:17):
What kind of companies can yousee best benefiting from SpaXial?
Yeah, so we've targeted three maingroups because that's really where we see
XR industry and even a lot ofthree developers living in XR
gaming. It's a huge space.
A lot of them are still manually havingto code for different environments.
The same thing goes for robotics. Andthen of course what Rio focused on,
(04:41):
which was immersive training.
It's not just for specificallythe active shooter and
first responder training that Rio did,but any kind of immersive training.
So any high turnover companies that arelooking to scale with training in that
regard, anytime that theylook at environments,
they can then use this as a toolto help them test and expand and
(05:03):
really develop their product in.
And so what I like to think of isthat SpaXial in terms of Legos,
we're not building the block.This isn't building the asset.
There's hundreds of companies that arebuilding the asset generation. This is
the mechanics behind it. So we'rebuilding, SpaXial is like the Lego kit.
So you go and you buythe kit off the shelf.
(05:24):
This kind of helps themput that kit together,
put your project in place andreally help you design it.
So we actually have, one of ourdesign partners is a gaming company,
and they're using it to help them makesure that the menu items and the buttons
that they place on thereare wired correctly.
When they go and they changesomething or change the design,
(05:45):
they can go in there.
So that's a design element as well thatthey can go in and use SpaXial for.
Yeah, it's really interesting becauseone of the challenges we often hear about
companies get very excited start to dotheir 3D or try and do their 3D solution
and find that the content is not eitherin the right format or not even in a
3D format,
and suddenly there's a big digitaltransformation piece that has to happen.
(06:10):
It slows down the project, but B issuddenly a whole bunch of different costs.
So I guess you're saying you'vegot a platform to help that,
they still have to probablybuild it in the kind of 3D,
but managing all of that and puttingthose environments together as where
spatial fits. Is that correct?
Correct, yes. And so this kind offocuses on having AI that can generate
(06:32):
not just the 3D content, butactually understands the state.
And that really is the hard problemthat we are set to solve is that this
AI can now understand how things movethrough an area and how they interact
with that space.
That's interesting. So it'sobviously very dependent on ai.
It's a huge business within itself,
(06:53):
and industries are beginning to tryand understand how they deploy it.
So can you maybe talk a little bit,there's some concerns about ai.
Can you talk about how you are usingand managing AI so the listeners get a
good idea of how SpaXialis benefiting from.
Ai? So we have the benefit wherewe were able to test it on,
(07:14):
I think it was petabytes of data.
And we're still testing oursystem on data that comes in
to making sure that workflowsare smooth and that how an actual
human moves through a space naturallyis really what the system is using.
And so things like would you turn rightor turn left or going through a space?
(07:36):
I think a good example is I lookat children. So my own kids,
if they look at a chair thatmight not be an actual chair,
it might be a table or a poolor a playground for their
dolls or for their toys.
And so really how we understandhow to use physical pieces
in a space is really important. And thatcomes with testing it on a lot of data.
(08:00):
And that's really what we use andthat's really how we use ai. That's.
Amazing. So I guess the last questionis how do people get involved?
What kind of steps they need to takeand check it out and the resources,
communities, anythingthey can do to spatial.
Perfect. Yeah. Well, we have on ourwebsite a signup for the beta test.
(08:21):
And so if they just go to SpaXial,
so S-P-A-X-I-A-L.ai,
they can sign up for the beta.
And then of course once we releasethe beta version after our alpha test,
we'd love to get feedbackfrom the community.
And that's really how we focus onbuilding things is we want them to be a
benefit for our developers.
We want people to get excitedabout using it and then really,
(08:44):
of course push this todevelop more content.
We saw that that was really the bottleneckin our space is that it's super hard
to create content.
This is one piece that AI can definitelyhelp and excel with instead of
manually piecing all theseenvironments together. It's another
coding assistant that is really valuablefor what we saw on our team and we're
(09:06):
excited to get that out to the community.
Amazing.
And I think it's going to make some realimprovements and management around the
3D space as well. So thank you.You've mentioned the website.
Please go and check it out everybody,
and I'm sure there's feedbackloops in there as well.
So thank you and good luck.
Thank you.
Hello everybody. Mark Sage,
Executive Director of theAR for Enterprise Alliance,
or better known as the AREA. Andwelcome to our latest Fireside Chat!
Fireside Chats are talking to some ofthe industry experts from both companies
that deploying the technology toproviders of hardware and software
university educational experts as well.
(00:31):
So today we've got Aliciafrom well Avrio Analytics,
but a new interesting piece of workthat you're doing called SpaXial.
.Alicia, welcome again. I know I've hadthe pleasure of speaking to you before,
but this is a very exciting kind ofcompany and idea you've been working on.
So if you're okay,let's crack straight in.
(00:52):
Tell us a little bit about what SpaXialis and what specific problem you're
trying to solve and you started to developthis kind of capability and company.
Perfect. Yes, thank youfor having me, Mark.
I appreciate the opportunity to comeand talk about what we're doing next.
And this is really excitingfor us because of, as you know,
we've been in the industryfor quite a while.
We actually built this tool becauseof a problem that we had had
(01:15):
SpaXial, so it's S-P-A-X-I-A-L.
So "spatial" with an X.
We are focusing on building an AI codingassistant that specifically works for
3D workflows. So it makes3D environments smarter.
You're able to edit building blocks andthe AI can actually understand just like
code. And so what wefound the problem was,
(01:37):
is that spatial developmentin 3D is very messy.
It's difficult, it's time consuming.
That really held upabout 70% of our time was
focused on spatial developmentand spatial recognition for our
training that we did at Avrio.
And so what we did is during that weworked on and we created this tool to
(02:01):
really help us scale this piece so thatinstead of manually having to adapt
every environment,
we could write something that couldthen be able to test in hundreds of
thousands of environments with a matterof minutes instead of having to manually
code each of those environments. Andso it makes it not only so much faster,
but it was able for us tostreamline a lot of that process.
(02:25):
And so during that, we talked tomore and more people in the industry,
whether they were in training orgaming was huge, or even in robotics,
they all had the same problem of thesemanual scaling of the environments.
And we said, well, this tool is somethingthat can go through any 3D developer.
And so we decided to launch that.
We have a kind of an alpha beta thatwe're using for a number of our design
(02:49):
partners. We have some greatpartners in there like AWS, HTC,
Pico and a lot of indiestudios, gaming, robotics,
and they're really giving us thefeedback that we need to help grow this
product.
It's amazing.
So I know you on behalf of the AREAdid that amazing piece of work on a
low-code, no-code platform, so itkind of fits into that a little bit.
(03:12):
I also know many companies thatstart on their XR journey in their
kind of find that this isone of the biggest issues.
Maybe can you talk a little bit aboutthat? You mentioned the 70% saving,
but what kind of other thingsis SpaXial allowing you to do?
Yeah, so exactly right.
We definitely saw a huge gapand from what we were doing
(03:35):
as far as the skill level thatwe needed to have these sort
of environments. And sowhat we saw on our side,
as I mentioned,
70% of what we found wassavings on our budget.
It took us,
it actually cut our time in halfusing the code to develop and use this
(03:56):
tool. And that's why we reallyfound it valuable. On our side,
there's about 40% what we found isa premium for experts that develop
in 3D environments.
And so this really kind of opens upthat entry point for people to get
into XR.
Which is kind of a little bit mynext question, who is the ideal user?
(04:17):
What kind of companies can yousee best benefiting from SpaXial?
Yeah, so we've targeted three maingroups because that's really where we see
XR industry and even a lot ofthree developers living in XR
gaming. It's a huge space.
A lot of them are still manually havingto code for different environments.
The same thing goes for robotics. Andthen of course what Rio focused on,
(04:41):
which was immersive training.
It's not just for specificallythe active shooter and
first responder training that Rio did,but any kind of immersive training.
So any high turnover companies that arelooking to scale with training in that
regard, anytime that theylook at environments,
they can then use this as a toolto help them test and expand and
(05:03):
really develop their product in.
And so what I like to think of isthat SpaXial in terms of Legos,
we're not building the block.This isn't building the asset.
There's hundreds of companies that arebuilding the asset generation. This is
the mechanics behind it. So we'rebuilding, SpaXial is like the Lego kit.
So you go and you buythe kit off the shelf.
(05:24):
This kind of helps themput that kit together,
put your project in place andreally help you design it.
So we actually have, one of ourdesign partners is a gaming company,
and they're using it to help them makesure that the menu items and the buttons
that they place on thereare wired correctly.
When they go and they changesomething or change the design,
(05:45):
they can go in there.
So that's a design element as well thatthey can go in and use SpaXial for.
Yeah, it's really interesting becauseone of the challenges we often hear about
companies get very excited start to dotheir 3D or try and do their 3D solution
and find that the content is not eitherin the right format or not even in a
3D format,
and suddenly there's a big digitaltransformation piece that has to happen.
(06:10):
It slows down the project, but B issuddenly a whole bunch of different costs.
So I guess you're saying you'vegot a platform to help that,
they still have to probablybuild it in the kind of 3D,
but managing all of that and puttingthose environments together as where
spatial fits. Is that correct?
Correct, yes. And so this kind offocuses on having AI that can generate
(06:32):
not just the 3D content, butactually understands the state.
And that really is the hard problemthat we are set to solve is that this
AI can now understand how things movethrough an area and how they interact
with that space.
That's interesting. So it'sobviously very dependent on ai.
It's a huge business within itself,
(06:53):
and industries are beginning to tryand understand how they deploy it.
So can you maybe talk a little bit,there's some concerns about ai.
Can you talk about how you are usingand managing AI so the listeners get a
good idea of how SpaXialis benefiting from.
Ai? So we have the benefit wherewe were able to test it on,
(07:14):
I think it was petabytes of data.
And we're still testing oursystem on data that comes in
to making sure that workflowsare smooth and that how an actual
human moves through a space naturallyis really what the system is using.
And so things like would you turn rightor turn left or going through a space?
(07:36):
I think a good example is I lookat children. So my own kids,
if they look at a chair thatmight not be an actual chair,
it might be a table or a poolor a playground for their
dolls or for their toys.
And so really how we understandhow to use physical pieces
in a space is really important. And thatcomes with testing it on a lot of data.
(08:00):
And that's really what we use andthat's really how we use ai. That's.
Amazing. So I guess the last questionis how do people get involved?
What kind of steps they need to takeand check it out and the resources,
communities, anythingthey can do to spatial.
Perfect. Yeah. Well, we have on ourwebsite a signup for the beta test.
(08:21):
And so if they just go to SpaXial,
so S-P-A-X-I-A-L.ai,
they can sign up for the beta.
And then of course once we releasethe beta version after our alpha test,
we'd love to get feedbackfrom the community.
And that's really how we focus onbuilding things is we want them to be a
benefit for our developers.
We want people to get excitedabout using it and then really,
(08:44):
of course push this todevelop more content.
We saw that that was really the bottleneckin our space is that it's super hard
to create content.
This is one piece that AI can definitelyhelp and excel with instead of
manually piecing all theseenvironments together. It's another
coding assistant that is really valuablefor what we saw on our team and we're
(09:06):
excited to get that out to the community.
Amazing.
And I think it's going to make some realimprovements and management around the
3D space as well. So thank you.You've mentioned the website.
Please go and check it out everybody,
and I'm sure there's feedbackloops in there as well.
So thank you and good luck.
Thank you.
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