Building the World’s First Augmented Reality Laptop with Spacetop
How Spacetop pioneered a new category of productivity tools with the help of fractional experts from A.Team.
Two former Magic Leap executives wanted to build the world’s first augmented reality laptop. The vision was right out of Sci-Fi: Blur the boundaries between virtual and physical, offering a computing experience far beyond conventional screens. Sounds easy, right?
Here’s the big question with spatial computing: How do you combine the portability of smartphones and the productivity of multi-monitor setups? Traditional laptops, while versatile, fall short of being truly mobile.
The founders, Tamir Berliner and Tomer Kahan, had deep experience building everything from the underlying technology in the Xbox Kinect to the iPhone’s FaceID tech to the Microsoft Surface's touch screen. But they wanted to tackle an even bigger, more universal problem: How do you make people more productive?
Enter Sightful, and their signature product: the Spacetop computer.
Spacetop combines the ease and mobility of a laptop with the ergonomic relief and productivity boost of a home monitor setup. The AR glasses are connected to the keyboards so they’re not heavy or cumbersome.
Creating such a game-changing piece of hardware presented many challenges. Chief among them was building an operating system that could integrate a seamless user experience. That’s where A.Team came in.
Tapping spatial computing architects for a 0 to 1 build
To realize the vision, Sightful collaborated with A.Team, bringing in fractional AR experts, who integrated with Sightful’s core tech team, just like full-time hires would.
Inside the Spacetop base is a Snapdragon 865 processor—which means this puppy isn’t running on Windows. A.Team helped Sightful to build their own operating system from 0 to 1.
The development phase was marked by extensive prototyping, testing, and iteration. What they came up with was a step forward in an entirely new direction, without abandoning the habits of workers.
The genius of Spacetop is that you’re just using a laptop—except instead of a screen, an enormous curved display appears in front of you. You can move and pin windows, zoom in with simple gestures, and pin windows side-by-side.
“This is only the first step in making AR a part of all our daily lives.” — Tomar Kahan, Co-Founder
The sci-fi tool of a digital nomad’s dreams
After three years in beta, and raising $61M, Spacetop successfully emerged from stealth in early 2023. The buzz in the tech industry around the “world’s first augmented reality laptop” earned Sightful coverage from major publications like Wired and Popular Mechanics.
Kahan sees Spacetop as pioneering a new category of productivity tools—the successor to the laptop as we know it today. By taking the next step forward in spatial computing, Spacetop raised the bar for the rapidly changing future of work.
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