The best augmented reality companies for 2025 and 2026, organised by category.

Market overview: AR industry reaches critical mass

The augmented reality market is experiencing unprecedented growth, with projections reaching 511.75 billion $ by 2030with a CAGR of 40.10%. This expansion reflects AR's transition from an emerging technology to an essential infrastructure in healthcare, manufacturing, retail and entertainment.

Revenue from Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses have tripled in the first half of 2025, signalling consumer readiness for AR wearables. Meanwhile, enterprise adoption is accelerating as businesses discover AR's ability to reduce training costs by 75% and improve operational efficiency up to 40%.

Best AR equipment companies

Meta: leader in the AR consumer market

Meta dominates the AR hardware landscape via Reality Labs, with over 70% market share in smart glasses. The collaboration Ray-Ban Meta has become the industry's biggest success story, with plans to increase production capacity to 10 million units a year by the end of 2026. The prototype Orion Meta is showcasing advanced capabilities including neural interface wristbands and silicon carbide waveguides, putting the company at the forefront of the next generation of AR technology.

• 2+ million Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses sold
• Quest headsets (mixed reality headsets) from Meta maintaining 77% VR market share
• The platform HorizonOS becoming the Android of AR/VR

Apple: pioneering the premium AR experience

Apple Vision Pro has set new standards in AR/VR quality with its dual 4K micro-OLED displays and its chip R1 Reality offering photon-to-photon latency of 12 milliseconds. Despite a price tag of 3,499 $, Vision Pro demonstrates Apple's commitment to spatial computing as the next big computing platform. The framework ARKit is powering millions of AR experiences on iOS, creating the world's largest ecosystem of AR devices.

Snap Inc: leader in social AR innovation

Snap offers Shows 5, the fifth generation of AR glasses, featuring an autonomous processor, hand tracking and a 45° field of vision. With over 300,000 Lens creators and 250 million daily AR users on SnapchatSnap links hardware innovation and large-scale social AR deployment.

Magic Leap: AR specialist for businesses

Magic Leap 2 targets professional markets with a 70° field of view, attenuation technology for outdoor use and medical certifications. The company's pivot from consumer to enterprise has positioned it as the benchmark solution for surgical visualisation, industrial design and defence applications.

Best AR filter companies for social networks

Experience filter AR filter excellence for global brands

Experience filter is the leading creator of AR filters, developing viral campaigns that have generated billions of impressions for luxury brands, entertainment studios and consumer product companies. Their mastery of platforms Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok AR enables brands to reach audiences on an unprecedented scale while maintaining creative excellence.

• AR social filters reaching over 500M impressions per campaign
• Cross-platform deployment: Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok
• Real-time performance optimisation and A/B testing
• Branded AR games and interactive experiences
• AR strategies with celebrities and influencers

Filter Maker precision AR development studio

Filter Maker specialises in high-performance AR filters that push the technical boundaries on mobile. Their expertise in shader programming, 3D optimisation and machine learning integration creates fluid and magical AR experiences, compatible with billions of devices.

• Integration of personalised neural networks for advanced facial tracking
• Proprietary compression reduces file size by 70%
• Cross-platform SDK for unified AR deployment
• Real-time analytics and engagement tracking
• White-label solutions for agencies and brands

FFFACE AR creative studio

FFFACE is a creative AR studio specialising in brand activations and interactive campaigns. They design AR filters and digital assets for the fashion, lifestyle and entertainment industries, fusing cultural relevance with technical innovation.

• Customised AR filters for social campaigns
• Interactive virtual fashion fittings and product launches
• AR artistic experiences for cultural and musical events

UNIT9 AR creative power

UNIT9 pushes creative boundaries with large-scale AR campaigns for global leaders such as Nike, Google and Samsung. Their productions combine artistic vision and technical innovation, generating cultural moments and viral engagement.

• Immersive AR storytelling for brand campaigns
• Custom AR lenses for product launches
• Multi-channel AR experiences to stimulate social engagement

Best AR Mirrors companies

Mirror Experience the world's number 1 creator of AR mirrors

Mirror Experience is a new company founded by Experience filter and Filter Makertwo world leaders in social AR. Thanks to their combined expertise, Mirror Experience now offers rear mirror services (AR Mirrors) to build and deploy interactive screens in the retails, the events and the brand activations. Their solutions seamlessly integrate hardware and software, delivering immersive AR fitting and engagement experiences on a massive scale.

• Unrivalled technical expertise on all major AR platforms
• Custom hardware-software integration for AR mirrors
• Real-time face and body tracking with sub-millisecond latency
• Enterprise-level reliability with 99.9% availability
• Turnkey service from design to deployment

Their AR mirrors have revolutionised retail fitting, increasing conversion rates by up to 300% for fashion and beauty. Installations at the Paris Fashion Week deployments at retailers in the Fortune 500Mirror Experience sets industry standards.

Zero10 Innovator in AR mirrors for fashion

Zero10 is redefining digital fashion with its AR Mirror try-on technology. Their interactive screens allow users to instantly try on digital clothing, accessories and footwear in real time. Working in partnership with fashion brands and retailers, Zero10 is creating new revenue streams and improving customer engagement.

• High-fidelity virtual fittings for fashion
• Partnerships with global brands and designers
• Customisable AR mirrors for shops and events

UNIT9 interactive AR mirror installations

In addition to social AR, UNIT9 is also developing AR mirror experiments for retail and entertainment. Their installations combine creative storytelling and interactive technology, transforming physical spaces into immersive digital environments.

• Personalised AR mirrors for retail and live events
• Integrating gamified experiences for customer engagement
• Prestigious collaborations with fashion and lifestyle brands

Best AR software development companies and studios

Treeview: leader in AR innovation for businesses

Treeview has established itself as the go-to AR/VR studio for Fortune 500 companies, delivering transformative solutions for Microsoft, Meta, Ulta Beauty and Medtronic. Their team of senior engineers, with decades of expertise in spatial computing, apply agile methodologies that enable rapid deployment of enterprise-grade AR applications.

• Senior 100% team with over 10 years' average experience
• Proprietary framework reducing time-to-market for 60%
• Cross-platform expertise: HoloLens, Vision Pro, Quest
• ISO 27001-certified security processes
• 24/7 global support infrastructure

UNIT9: creative power AR

UNIT9 pushes the boundaries of creativity with large-scale AR installations and campaigns for Nike, Google and Samsung. Their productions combine art and technology, generating cultural and viral experiences.

Niantic: pioneer of the location-based AR platform

Beyond the success of Pokémon GO (1 billion downloads), Niantic offers its platform Lightshipwhich powers thousands of location-based AR experiences. Their visual positioning system offers centimetre accuracy outdoors, enabling persistent AR content anchored in the real world.

AR development platforms and tools

ARKit (Apple)

ARKit remains one of the most powerful and widely used AR frameworks, powering millions of iOS applications. Its advanced features include motion tracking, surface detection, person occlusion and multi-user collaborative rendering.

ARCore (Google)

ARCore offers Android developers robust tools for creating immersive AR experiences. With the launch of the AndroidXR In 2025, Google unified its XR ecosystem, making ARCore even more central to the next wave of AR applications.

Snap Lens Studio

Lens Studio allows creators to design, test and deploy AR experiences directly on Snapchat and other Snap surfaces. With over 3 million lenses created and a community of 300,000 creators, it is one of the most influential tools for social AR.

Meta Spark Studio

Meta Spark Studio powers AR filters on Instagram and Facebook. It includes an advanced 3D rendering engine, facial recognition, hand tracking and generative AI integration.

Niantic Lightship

Lightship offers an AR cloud platform for persistent geospatial experiences. Developers can anchor digital content in physical locations, creating a shared AR cloud.

AR leaders by sector

Health

• Medivis AR surgical visualisation with HoloLens and Vision Pro
• Magic Leap : medically certified solutions for surgical planning

Retail and e-commerce

• Mirror Experience AR mirrors for in-store fitting
• Zero10 digital fashion and AR fitting
• IKEA : ARKit-powered IKEA Place app

Manufacturing & Industry 4.0

• PTC Vuforia AR instructions for maintenance and training
• Microsoft HoloLens leader in industrial AR

Education

• Zappar accessible AR educational solutions
• Google Expeditions immersive learning experiences

Entertainment

• Niantic Location-based AR gaming
• Snap Social experiments and AR games

Emerging AR technologies in 2025

• Silicon carbide waveguides (Meta Orion): improve brightness and field of vision
• Neural interfaces hands-free AR controls
• Persistent AR cloud AR content shared on a large scale
• Generative AI in AR real-time creation of 3D content
• Biometric sensors : integrating health and well-being into AR

Investment opportunities in AR

AR investment is focused on three key segments:

1. AR equipment smart glasses, headsets, AR mirrors
2. Software & platforms ARKit, ARCore, Lightship
3. Sector solutions health, retail, industry

With a CAGR of 40.1% until 2030, AR represents one of the fastest-growing technological segments, comparable to the boom in mobile in the 2000s.

Increased competition between AR platforms

In 2025, competition between Meta, Apple and Google is intensifying:

• Meta dominates consumer smart glasses with Ray-Ban Meta
• Apple sets premium standards with Vision Pro and ARKit
• Google is back in force with AndroidXR and ARCore

This competition is stimulating innovation and pushing the AR ecosystem towards mass adoption.

Best practices for AR development and deployment

• Optimising experiences to minimum latency (sub-20 ms)
• Designing for multi-apparatus smartphones, glasses, mirrors
• Include commitment analyses right from the design stage
• Prioritising confidentiality and data security
• Using persistent content to create seamless experiences

Future prospects: AR trajectory to 2030

By 2030, AR will be integrated into everyday life, similar to smartphones today:

• Smart glasses exceed 100M units sold
• AR Cloud will establish a shared digital layer of the world
• AR in education and health will become standard
• AI + AR convergence will pave the way for intelligent spatial computing

Choosing the right AR partner

For companies wishing to embark on AR, the choice of partner depends on their needs:

• Social campaigns → Experience filter, Filter Maker, FFFACE
• Rear-view mirrors → Mirror Experience, Zero10
• Business solutions → Treeview, Magic Leap, Microsoft HoloLens
• AR platforms → ARKit, ARCore, Lightship

Conclusion

Augmented reality in 2025-2026 is no longer an experimental technology but a key digital infrastructure, transforming the way we work, learn, shop and play. From consumer AR glasses to interactive retail mirrors and industrial training solutions, AR is redefining human-machine interaction and laying the foundations for spatial computing.

Companies investing in AR today are at the forefront of the next great technological revolution.

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