Courtesy of Snap
From Camera Drones to Augmented Reality, Here Are Snap’s Newest Products and Features
Social media giant Snap is selling a new product that could change the way you see the world—but no, it’s not the company’s long-awaited augmented reality glasses.
On Thursday, the Santa Monica-based firm launched a flying camera called Pixy, a pocket-sized drone that could take your next selfie from an aerial view. The Snapchat-connected drone was probably the biggest surprise from Snap’s Partner Summit, an annual event when the company shares updates on its products, features and partnerships.
But Pixy wasn’t the only major announcement. From augmented reality (AR) at concerts to a new way to shop online, here are some highlights from the Snap summit:
Virtual Dressing Rooms
Snap is launching a Dress Up tab on the Snapchat app where users can virtually try on apparel using augmented reality. The company has already deployed AR shopping, but Dress Up will create a dedicated destination—just a tap away from the app’s camera—where users can browse items, share looks and bookmark outfits and accessories.
To date, AR shopping has allowed Snapchatters to preview 3D models of sneakers on their feet or sunglasses on their faces using their smartphone cameras. On Thursday, Snap announced users can now virtually try on clothes using full-body photos, with Snap overlaying products onto the pictures.
Snap has pitched AR as an innovative way for brands to advertise, drive sales and reduce item returns. Most shopping experiences on Snapchat link to an external website for customers wanting to buy products, a spokesperson said.
The company is now offering new software tools to make it easier for retailers to make AR versions of their items, using existing product images. Snap also announced that companies can integrate its AR try-on experience onto their own platforms; Puma will be the first company to use the technology to let shoppers digitally try sneakers directly on its own app.
Snap's AR tech allows users to try on sneakers using their smartphones.
Courtesy of Snap
AR at Music Festivals
Snap has recently taken steps to bring AR experiences to physical locations like local landmarks and small businesses. Now, Snap is bringing AR to music festivals through a multi-year partnership with Beverly Hills-based Live Nation.
Starting with the Electric Daisy Carnival next month in Las Vegas, concertgoers can use AR to try on merchandise, find friends and discover AR experiences around the festival grounds. Other festivals that will be deploying Snap’s AR include Lollapalooza in Chicago, Wireless Festival in London, Rolling Loud in Miami and The Governors Ball in New York, the company said.
Snap’s New Camera Drone
As mentioned, Snap will now sell a pocket-sized flying camera called Pixy. CEO Evan Spiegel pitched the device as a new creative tool allowing users to capture photos and videos from new, aerial angles.
The mini-drone comes with four preset flight paths that users can select with the press of a button, no controller needed. Pixy “knows when and where to return” and lands gently in the palm of your hand, Spiegel said. From there, users can wirelessly transfer the aerial shots to their Snapchat accounts.
The Pixy device costs $230 to buy. Snap advised customers to check out their local laws and regulations around drones before letting Pixy take flight.
Snap’s AR glasses, meanwhile, are not yet for sale. The latest Spectacles are currently being tested by “hundreds” of developers who’ve received early access, according to Sophia Dominguez, Snap’s head of AR platform partnerships.
Director Mode for Creators
Speaking of creative tools, Snapchat is rolling out a new suite of camera and editing features, called Director Mode, allowing users to make more polished content.
One feature will allow creators to use a smartphone’s front-facing and back-facing cameras at the same time—letting them record what’s in front of them while capturing their reaction simultaneously.
Snap is also making it easier to seamlessly transform the backgrounds of videos through its Green Screen mode—similar to an existing feature on TikTok—while its Quick Edit mode lets users easily edit together multiple Snaps. Director Mode will roll out on Apple devices in the coming months, followed by Android devices later this year.
Snap has allowed creators to attach AR experiences to physical locations.
Courtesy of Snap
Big User Numbers
In addition to new products and features, Snap’s executives touted the size and engagement of the company’s user base.
Snapchat now reaches more than 600 million monthly active users, they said Thursday, up from the 500 million reported last May. Last week, the company reported it had 332 million daily active users.
As TechCrunch recently noted, Snapchat has been growing faster than rivals Facebook and Twitter—though TikTok remains the dominant social media app of the moment, with the most downloads in the first quarter of this year and more than 1 billion monthly active users as of last year.
Snapchat users have embraced its AR offerings, with people interacting with the app’s AR Lenses 6 billion times per day on average, Spiegel noted.
“What was once a far-off vision for computing overlaid on the world through augmented reality is possible today through our camera,” he said.From Your Site Articles
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Midjourney/Dall-E
At the “smart” bus stop I press a button and an AI swiftly triangulates incoming Metro Los Angeles GIS (Geographic Information System) data before a synthesized voice reads out wait times. I jump on the bus when it arrives, using my Tap card to pay the fare and grab a seat, plugging my charger into the (under seat) USB port. Thanks to the bus’s persistent WiFi signal en route, I pull up the latest technology report from the Harvard Business Review, courtesy of the L.A. Public Library, and start making notes.
Twenty minutes later and I'm the first one walking into my co-working space. As soon as I swipe my entry card the centralized system detects a change in the motion sensor network. It then turns on the lights, ambient music, and HVAC (heating, ventilation and AC) , ensuring the building remains energy efficient and to code when unoccupied.
Midjourney/Dall-E
The 2028 Plan
In December 2020, when the SmartLA 2028 city plan was released by (the now former) Mayor Garcetti’s office, this sort of scenario felt far-off.
But it’s all there in the document: a plan to turn L.A. from reliance on fossil fuels and cars and into a data-driven connected city, which addresses the digital divide and brings fresh ideas, including telehealth, clean tech and a switch to mass transit.
What no one knew, when they started working on this plan back in 2019, was a global pandemic was on its way. It took that pandemic to throw everyone into a digital-ready future earlier than (everyone) expected. But here we are.
“Throughout the crisis, digital tools have emerged as a critical lifeline for our society,” notes the SmartLA 2028 city plan. “Enabling contact-free essential services, accelerated medical solutions, artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted policy making, protest coordination through social media, real-time community engagement and a scale and pace of innovation previously unthinkable.”
LA and the Future of Everything
Let’s back up a moment, to the 1950s when L.A. first looked like The Future to the rest of the world.
Post-war industries flourished here. The Federal-Aid Highway Act (1956) ushered in the freeway system and cars poured off the manufacturing lots. Cold War NASA missions heralded an aerospace boom. The Case Study House Program showcased prefabricated components and modern appliances. Bold sci-fi style buildings such as The Chemosphere House (1960) and LAX’s Theme Building (1961) materialized on the landscape. L.A. County’s population tripled between 1940 (2.7 million) to over 6 million by 1960.
In 2023, our population is now north of 10 million and, as a result, this new L.A. Future plan is less about appearances, and more about a skillful cloud-based hyper-connectivity providing a vast mesh of advanced technologies which aim to make this city sustainable, livable and equitable for all.
Sure, we’ve got Big Tech from Up North on our doorstep. The FAANG companies (Facebook, Apple etc.) have carved out nearly 6 million square footage of L.A. westside alone, and obviously they contribute massively to our economy. But a fairer L.A. will depend less on unicorns (startups with a $1 billion valuation before public listing) and more on a needs-based cohesive approach to innovation, drawing on the best resources from academic institutions, updating local government departments across the board, and bringing both the venture capital community and its well-funded startups into alliance with real-world requirements.
Along these lines, Miki Reynolds, CEO and co-founder of Grid110, the L.A. tech hub, wants to ensure a spirit of egalitarianism is carried through into L.A.’s startups.
"The L.A. startup scene is more than just Venice and Santa Monica," says Reynolds, who prefers a cityscape and initially headquartered Grid110 in DTLA as a result. "Since our inception, we've supported 250 companies who have raised over $90M in investment capital. But I'm even more proud to say 70 % of our portfolio companies have founders who are women and 75% are founders of color. L.A. is an incredibly rich and diverse city - we need to reflect that in our emerging technology."
A welcome sign is that many L.A. technology companies have joined PledgeLA, an industry-wide initiative to make the tech sector accountable to its communities, establishing goals around diversity and social impact, and recording their progress.
Midjourney/Dall-E
Technology For Good
So how will L.A. ensure its tech-enabled future is providing value for all? The SmartLA 2028 city plan laid out some bold objectives, with measurable outcomes including a 10% reduction in travel time by utilizing data from 40,000 loop detectors across 4,500 connected intersections and annual savings of $3 million through converting over 165,000 street lamps to LED and connecting them to a dashboard to streamline maintenance and track outages.
The MyLA311 site and mobile app allow Angelenos a simple-to-use interface to city services. It's relatively unsophisticated in terms of UX (user experience) and design, but it works because it was created with equity in mind so everyone can use it. If you need to report a pothole, civic safety issue, schedule pick-up of bulky items or find the nearest municipal building or park, it’s all there - and available in English, Spanish, Korean, Armenian and Chinese (simplified and traditional) to reflect our diverse communities.
MyLA311 would not have been possible, however, without the Los Angeles Open Data project. This is the result of over 7 years of capturing, standardizing, centralizing and then analyzing vast amounts of city data - from almost every department - transportation, sanitation, public safety (crime stats), housing, infrastructure and health (most notably COVID-19 transmission data).
The Los Angeles Open Data’s main function is to provide data and analysis support to city programs which aim to realize high-value community outcomes by providing policy recommendations. Simply put - if you don’t know where you’re starting from (base line), how will you know if a program is a success?
But it’s also entirely open and accountable to the public too. As a result, Angelenos can now drill down to find out more on hyperlocal data sets which provide meaning to them. For example, a team scraped data on Black-owned businesses in L.A. and compiled a “story map” here, so people can choose to spend money within their communities and support causes most meaningful to them.
This data also powers ideas which have emerged from the Innovation and Performance Commission (IPC), an open forum for city employees to propose pilot projects which can receive allocations from a $1 million fund. According to the SmartLA 2028 report, “Since its inception in 2016, over 40 projects have been funded, including a mobile nurse practitioner unit that reduces emergency room visits, employee payroll app that reduces paper and staff resources, and 3D printers for rapid prototyping of public works projects.”
Connectivity Access
All these initiatives are vital to the running of a “smart city” - but what’s the use if a significant proportion of the population doesn’t have access to digital connectivity?
This situation was exacerbated by the pandemic and many agencies stepped up to close up the digital divide, including Get Connected Los Angeles, where the city partnered with the California Emerging Technology Fund and EveryoneOn to help Angelenos get access to computers, digital literary services and low-cost internet connectivity.
The Los Angeles County Library extended their Wi-Fi service to over 60 of its local branch parking structures so locals could “park and connect” (or “sit and connect” at nearby outdoor seating) to pick up email, do homework, or carry out job searches. While the Los Angeles Public Library rolled out its Tech2go Hotspot Loan to library card holders in good standing and re-trained staff to act as “cybernauts” and offer technology assistance.
Imagining the Future
With all these tech-future equitable concepts in place, what will L.A. look like in 2028 when the world arrives on our doorstep for the Olympics?
At first glance - and this is no bad thing - it might not look that different at all, because no new construction/venues will be built, according to the official Games Plan. We have enough facilities to host the Games. In a bid for sustainability and imaginative adaptive reuse, the plan is clear on that score.
But what will be entirely revolutionary is the technologically-based infrastructure enabling everyone to get around, connect, find out what’s going on, and enjoy the sporting and cultural events. As 15,000 athletes arrive at LAX they’ll take the automated people mover to the Metro and end up at the Olympic Village (UCLA) in no time. With the smart city layer in place, anything is possible - augmented reality glasses overlaying real-time sports scores, holograms of athletes participating in community-led training sessions, multi-lingual robots acting as guides and scanning tickets at turnstiles.
It all starts with the data - and L.A. is already way ahead of the game on that score.
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But while AI continues to dominate headlines, another sector is quietly making waves—defense technology. And one LA-based startup just secured a major endorsement from investors and the U.S. government.
Castelion’s Hypersonic Bet—Can It Outrun the Defense Industry’s Red Tape?
Image Source: Castelion
El Segundo-based Castelionjust raised$100 million to accelerate its mission to build hypersonic weapons faster, cheaper, and at scale. The financing—$70 million in equity (led by Lightspeed Venture Partners with participation from a16z, Lavrock Ventures, Cantos, First In, BlueYard Capital, and Interlagos) and $30 million in venture debt (from Silicon Valley Bank)—is the latest sign that venture capital sees national security startups as a high-growth opportunity.
Unlike traditional defense contractors, Castelion is operating like a fast-moving startup, not a slow-moving government supplier. Founded by former SpaceX engineers, the company is applying an iterative, test-heavy approach to building long-range hypersonic strike weapons—which travel at speeds exceeding Mach 5 (3,800+ mph) and are designed to evade modern missile defenses.
Not Just VC-Backed—The U.S. Military is Betting on Castelion Too
While the $100 million raise is a major milestone, Castelion already has funded contracts with the U.S. Navy, U.S. Air Force, and U.S. Army. These contracts are focused on hypersonic technology development and scaled manufacturing, areas where the military has struggled to move quickly due to bureaucratic delays and reliance on traditional defense giants.
To prove it can execute, Castelion recently successfully launched a low-cost ballistic missile from a self-built launcher in Mojave. Now, with both government contracts and venture capital behind it, the company is pushing forward on more flight tests and building out its scaled production capabilities.
Image Source: Castelion - Castelion launches a missile prototype in Mojave, CA
With rising geopolitical tensions and an increasing focus on faster, cost-effective deterrence, Castelion is positioning itself as a new kind of defense player—one that moves at startup speed. Whether it can sustain that pace while navigating the complexities of government procurement remains to be seen, but one thing is clear: the future of defense tech isn’t just about who can build the best weapons—it’s about who can build them fast enough.
🤝 Venture Deals
LA Companies
- Omnitron Sensors, a Los Angeles-based pioneer in microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) fabrication technology, has secured over $13M in a Series A funding round led by Corriente Advisors, LLC, with participation from L'ATTITUDE Ventures. The company plans to use the funds to expand its engineering and operations teams and accelerate the mass production of its first product, a reliable and affordable MEMS step-scanning mirror designed for various applications, including AI data centers, advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), drones, extended reality (XR) headsets, and toxic gas-detection systems. - learn more
- Camouflet, a Los Angeles-based technology company specializing in AI-driven dynamic pricing solutions, has secured a $12M Series A funding round led by QVM. The company plans to utilize the proceeds to scale its platform across various industries, expand into international markets, and enhance its technology and team to better serve its clients. - learn more
LA Venture Funds
- Clocktower Ventures participated in a $6.2M Seed funding round for Foyer, a New York-based fintech startup that assists individuals in saving for home purchases. The funds will be used to enhance Foyer's platform and expand its user base. - learn more
- Smash Capital participated in ElevenLabs' $180M Series C funding round, bringing the company's valuation to $3.3 billion. Based in New York, ElevenLabs specializes in AI-powered text-to-speech and voice cloning technology. The newly secured funds will be used to enhance its AI audio platform and expand its global presence. - learn more
- March Capital participated in a $25M Series C funding round for SuperOps to support the company's efforts in advancing AI research and development, expanding offerings for mid-market and enterprise managed service providers (MSPs), and scaling its global presence. Additionally, SuperOps is launching an AI-powered Endpoint Management tool to enhance IT team productivity. - learn more
- Cedars-Sinai participated in a $2M funding round for Neu Health to support its AI-driven neurology care platform for conditions like Parkinson’s disease and dementia. Originating from the University of Oxford, Neu Health will use the funds to enter the U.S. market, beginning with a six-month pilot program at Cedars-Sinai focused on improving neurology patient care. - learn more
- Chapter One Ventures participated in a $2.8M seed funding round for Mevvy, a blockchain startup aiming to democratize Maximal Extractable Value (MEV) trading by simplifying access and reducing technical complexities. The funds will be used to further develop Mevvy's platform, expand its user base, and enhance its offerings. - learn more
LA Exits
- Kona, an AI-powered assistant and coach for remote managers, has been acquired by 15Five, a performance management platform. Founded in 2019, Kona integrates with virtual meeting platforms like Zoom and Google Meet to provide tailored coaching and enablement for remote managers. The acquisition aims to enhance 15Five's offerings by incorporating Kona's capabilities to improve manager effectiveness within existing workflows. - learn more
