Interview with Snap CTO Bobby Murphy on augmented reality, visual communications, Lenses, Spectacles, and a future world in which the camera dominates
Mark Wilson / Fast Company : Tweets: @gavinsbaker , @jeremysliew , @_danielsinclair , @fastcompany , @willstew , @tomemrich , @ctrlzee , @kerrymflynn , and @mtatsis Tweets: Gavin Baker / @gavinsbaker : 1) $SNAP is right up there with $MU as an intellectually interesting stock right now. No strong opinion on either. Fantastic article with Bobby Murphy on augmented reality. IMHO, this is the best thinking and strategy I've come across on AR. https://www.fastcompany.com/ ... @jeremysliew : Great interview with @hellobobby, CTO and cofounder of @snapchat, unpacking what it means to be a “camera company”. When the camera is an input device, first you get inward facing lenses, then outward facing animations, gifs and information. More to come https://www.fastcompany.com/ ... Daniel Sinclair / @_danielsinclair : “While everyone was waiting for Magic Leap, Microsoft's HoloLens, or some other miraculous headset, Snap inceptioned AR upon the populace with silly face filter “Lenses” on the device you already had.” https://www.fastcompany.com/ ... @fastcompany : Exclusive: In his first interview since 2017, Snap's notoriously secretive CTO shares his vision of the future of augmented reality https://www.fastcompany.com/ ... Will Stew / @willstew : “@Snapchat also offers more practical camera capabilities, too, like solving math problems for you, that hint at Snap's ambitious future as a functional AR tool.” $SNAP https://www.fastcompany.com/ ... @tomemrich : “If you said to me, “The only thing AR will ever amount to was this beautiful new way to experience someone else's imagination through your own eyes,” that would be enough for us! ” >> Such a good read - interview with Bobby Murphy, cofounder of Snap https://www.fastcompany.com/ ... Mark Wilson / @ctrlzee : Many of Snap's craziest innovations are thanks to its prescient co-founder and CTO Bobby Murphy. Maybe you haven't heard of him, since he's given 3 or 4 interviews since 2012. We talked this week about the company's huge AR ambitions beyond the face https://www.fastcompany.com/ ... Kerry Flynn / @kerrymflynn : “Generally, the idea of AR is actually incredibly aligned to the way that we think about Snapchat as a platform. If you think back to 2012, Snapchat is really about visual communication.” - Snap CTO Bobby Murphy https://www.fastcompany.com/ ... Mike / @mtatsis : “Currently, the camera is used predominately for taking photos and communicating with your friends. We see a future world in which camera communication becomes one of many different things."-Cofounder Snap CTO Bobby Murphy $SNAP https://www.fastcompany.com/ ...
Context & Ripple Effects
Bobby Murphy's Fast Company interview is the most detailed articulation yet of the strategy his cofounder sketched in Evan Spiegel's Financial Times Q&A last winter: Snap is not a messaging app with filters but a camera company whose product line — Lenses, Spectacles, utility features like solving math problems through the viewfinder — all point at augmented reality. Investors reading it, including Gavin Baker who flagged the piece alongside Micron as an intellectually interesting stock, treat it as the clearest public statement of where Snap's R&D dollars are going.
The interview also retroactively explains Snap's quiet hardware groundwork, including the 2014 acquisition of Vergence Labs for Spectacles-related tech. Two-plus years later, the strategy held: Snap shipped Lens Cloud to give AR developers backend services for shared, location-based experiences, turning what Murphy describes here into an actual developer platform.
First-order effects
- Snap's identity gets repositioned for investors and developers from social app to AR platform, with Murphy framing practical camera uses — not just face filters — as the proof of concept.
Second-order effects
- Rivals building AR hardware and platforms, including Microsoft with HoloLens and well-funded startups like Magic Leap, now compete against a consumer-scale company distributing AR through a camera already in hundreds of millions of pockets rather than through headsets.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, AR competition splits into two structures — headset-first platforms versus camera-first software layers riding existing phones — and the winner is decided by developer tooling and utility use cases, which is exactly the gap Lens Cloud was built to close.
The trend: Consumer AR is consolidating around camera-first software platforms rather than standalone headsets, with Snap's Lenses-to-Lens Cloud progression as the template.