SpAItial, the London startup behind the Echo-2 world model, launched Echo-3 and an iPhone capture app on October 27, 2026, putting it in direct competition with Polycam, KIRI Engine and Niantic's Scaniverse. The company said Echo-3 "turns phone captures into high-fidelity 3D environments… at real-world scale" from a few minutes of footage, with no tripod or extra camera required, according to its launch post.
The pitch is easy to grasp. Whether the results live up to it is harder to say, since much of what is known so far comes from SpAItial itself.
What Echo-3 does
According to the app's App Store listing, a user records an iPhone scan for a few minutes, uploads it to the cloud and views the result in a 3D viewer. SpAItial said the reconstructions are metric, meaning "dimensions and distances match the real space."
The company also said Echo-3 "builds the scene from what you capture, then fills in the missing regions so they match the surroundings." Radiance Fields, which covered the launch, described the output as a Gaussian splatting scene at real-world scale.
SpAItial's examples of target spaces include homes, classrooms, factories, equipment, outdoor areas and multi-floor buildings. Japan's Mogura VR News noted how this differs from Echo-2, which generated worlds from a single image or panorama. Echo-3, by contrast, reconstructs real places.
On Pro iPhones with LiDAR, the app adds live coverage guidance and a dense point-cloud preview. Older or non-LiDAR iPhones are supported but don't get those views.
Pricing and availability
The app requires iOS 18 or later and runs only on iPhone. The launch post says Android is "coming soon," though no firm date had been given as of October 29.
Pricing runs on credits. Echo-3 processing costs 300 credits per minute of recorded scan, with a 900-credit minimum, according to SpAItial's terms of service. A 190-second scan, for example, costs 950 credits. Per the company's API docs, one credit equals $0.01.
In the UK App Store, SpAItial Standard costs £49.99 a month and SpAItial Pro £99.99 a month, and annual plans are also listed. Credit packs of 1,600, 3,200 and 8,000 credits cost £14.99, £29.99 and £79.99. Eligible new subscribers get a one-month free trial. Subscription credits reset monthly, while purchased top-up credits do not expire, per the terms.
Price drew early grumbling. A Reddit thread on r/GaussianSplatting, posted the day of launch, included complaints about cost.
Commercial rights and data terms
Under the terms, commercial use of Echo-2 and Echo-3 outputs is allowed during a paid Pro period. A Pro free trial grants temporary commercial rights that become permanent if the trial converts to a paid plan.
Users own their generated content, subject to the terms. Using outputs to train competing models requires written consent. SpAItial may also use user inputs and generated content to operate and improve its services, and to train or fine-tune its underlying model, a clause worth reading closely for anyone scanning private or proprietary spaces.
Enterprise API
The launch post said an API "will also be available… for enterprise customers," and pitched it for real estate visualization, simulation inputs, and AI agent scene understanding and editing. SpAItial's developer docs state that "Larger workloads and Echo-3 API access require Enterprise." New Runtime reported that the API is planned and not self-serve.
The public API currently covers Echo-2 models. The docs say most jobs finish in 6 to 8 minutes, but that is general generation guidance and not specific to Echo-3.
Claims still unverified
The benchmark comparison is SpAItial's own. The company's blog compared Echo-3 output with Polycam, KIRI Engine and Scaniverse on the same scene and claimed "sharp surfaces with no visible floaters." Radiance Fields flagged that the state-of-the-art claim lacks published benchmarks, and IsItSOTA lists Echo-3 as "Pending benchmarks." New Runtime cautioned that all performance claims come from the vendor.
Export formats are also unclear. SpAItial's docs show SPZ and SOG for generated worlds. Radiance Fields reported that meshes, normals and depth are supported too, but said the launch materials didn't specify where each is available.
How Echo-3 stacks up against rivals
Scaniverse, from Niantic Spatial, generates splats and meshes, and its plans page lists Plus at $20 a month and Pro at $50 a month. Polycam supports cloud-processed Gaussian splats.
World Labs, meanwhile, announced Atlas on September 1, 2026. According to its blog, the tool rebuilds iPhone video into a Gaussian splat through per-frame depth and fusion.
Funding and team
SpAItial announced a $13 million seed round in May 2025, led by Earlybird with Speedinvest and angel investors. No newer round had surfaced as of October 29, 2026.
TechCrunch's May 2025 profile listed the founders as Matthias Niessner, a Technical University of Munich professor and Synthesia co-founder; Ricardo Martin-Brualla, formerly of Google; David Novotný, formerly of Meta; and Luke Rogers, formerly of Cazoo and McKinsey.
Niessner told TechCrunch at the time: "I don't just want to have a 3D world. I also want this world to behave like the real world." SpAItial's use-cases page says geometry, semantics and physics representations for robotics "are on the roadmap."
