XR has spent years in “cool demo” territory – great on a show floor, much harder to plug into a real business case.
Lenovo and Arthur believe that phase is over.
At ISE 2026 in Barcelona, Lenovo’s XR stand was “overrun by customers and partners” on just the second day, according to Oliver Woehler, XR Sales Lead EMEA at Lenovo.
Crucially, the conversations weren’t about gadgets; they focused on use cases, savings, and speed to value – how to cut travel, improve unproductive meetings, and make training more scalable.
By combining AI with immersive collaboration, training, and digital twins, Lenovo and Arthur are positioning enterprise XR as something IT and business leaders can actually roll out, support, and measure – not just an experiment.
From Devices to Workflows
Lenovo’s message at ISE 2026 was clear: the era of selling headsets for their own sake is over.
“No one is buying an XR headset only because it’s an XR headset,” Woehler said. “You need to do something quicker, faster, easier, and cheaper.”
That is the lens Lenovo is using to frame every XR conversation. Rather than pushing generic “XR capability”, the company is building a curated ecosystem of software partners around specific, repeatable workflows in collaboration, training, and digital twins. Arthur is one of the flagship partners in its “smart collaboration” environment.
Lenovo’s broader goal is to support the full content workflow, regardless of device, so XR can sit naturally alongside existing endpoints.
“You can consume the content on 2D screens, 3D screens, laptops, tablets, and, of course, XR headsets,” Woehler said.
“This is what Lenovo is doing to help the customer on every level, in every area.”
For IT leaders, that framing matters. XR is treated as another endpoint in the digital workplace – integrated, managed, and secured within the existing stack – rather than as a separate, experimental island.
AI in the Room: Arthur’s Approach
Arthur has been in the enterprise VR market for around a decade.
The breakthrough in the last two years, according to Arthur Sales Associate, Laura Keresztyén, is the “match made in heaven” between AI and VR.
AI in Arthur isn’t just a chatbot off to the side – it appears as an embodied avatar inside the virtual space, able to act as a genuine participant and facilitator.
“This AI basically is an embodied avatar that can, just the same way as we humans, interact with the space, be an active participant, wearing many, many hats,” Keresztyén said.
In meetings, the AI helps teams decide what to focus on, organise ideas as they emerge, and proactively suggest next steps and actions. For leaders frustrated by meetings that meander and never quite land, this is about discipline and follow-through as much as it is about immersion. With teams spread across locations and time zones, that support is aimed at making the most of hard‑won meeting time, not just “meeting in VR for the sake of it”.
“It’s so hard to really find the right time in your calendar, especially if it’s five people or 10 people,” she noted.
“You might as well use it efficiently – and that’s where the AI helps keep you on the agenda and actually follow through on what needs to get done.”
Fast ROI and Immersive Training
Both Lenovo and Arthur see training as one of the fastest paths to a tangible return on XR, particularly for organisations with high training volumes, safety‑critical environments, or distributed workforces.
“We see a lot of customer demand on the training side,” Woehler said.
“Training scenarios are very easy to integrate into XR scenarios. With that, you can create a quick return on investment.”
The logic is straightforward. Many training programmes are already expensive to deliver, difficult to standardise, and constrained by access to real equipment or sites. Moving those scenarios into XR allows organisations to simulate realistic situations safely, repeat them as often as needed, and reach more people without adding more travel and facility cost.
Arthur supports both individual and multi-user training, using AI to personalise and scale the experience.
“Finally, we can create repeatable, personalized learning experiences that are meaningful for each individual,” Keresztyén said.
At the same time, Arthur preserves the social layer of learning by creating persistent training spaces where cohorts can debrief and interact together – with AI augmenting, not replacing, human trainers. AI is there to augment instructors and subject‑matter experts, not replace them.
Woehler compares AI’s impact here to “petrol in the fire,” speeding up content creation and scenario design, helping customers reach usable solutions faster. For teams that do not have in‑house 3D or game‑engine skills, that acceleration is critical to getting beyond the pilot phase.
Digital Twins You Can Walk Into
Digital twins are central to many digital transformation strategies. For many organisations, the challenge is making those models useful beyond a small group of specialists. For Arthur and Lenovo, the next step is making them immersive and interactive, so more people can understand and act on them.
“Digital twins are typically places where you might visualize something complex, which is great,” Keresztyén said.
“What Arthur brings is the ability to bring people inside those twins – to walk through, annotate, and brainstorm inside the twin itself.”
With AI that understands the twin, employees can be guided through a virtual factory, train on an exact replica of real-world equipment, or even ask the AI to dismantle a machine step by step in front of them. An AI avatar can show how it works, how it fails, or how to repair it.
From Lenovo’s perspective, this is the “logical evolution” of XR in the enterprise.
“We really believe that everyone working in a digital twin environment will have an XR headset in the future, like a mouse,” Woehler said.
“It will be everywhere. And this is where Lenovo wants to invest – to be part of this workflow.”
For IT and operations leaders, that vision turns XR from a niche device into something that will need to be procured, managed, and supported at scale for specific roles and functions.
Start with Pain Points, Not Pilots
With AI, XR, and digital twins high on the agenda at ISE 2026, many organizations are still asking where to begin. The consistent message from Lenovo and Arthur is to start with real pain points, not with the technology.
For Arthur, that means working backwards from the business.
“It’s very important not just to innovate for innovation’s sake,” Keresztyén said, “but to start with the business use cases and the pain points that need solutions.”
In practice, that might mean focusing first on a particular type of training, a recurring cross‑location meeting, or a clearly defined digital twin scenario. The aim is to build a small but realistic deployment that shows concrete value in weeks or months, not years.
For Lenovo, that quickly becomes a conversation about ROI.
“If our customers ask where they can use this technology, the answer is usually everywhere,” Woehler said.
“But we really need to look at where it brings a real benefit… where it helps you save money.”
Early wins include reduced travel through immersive collaboration, more effective training, and richer digital mock-ups for customer and marketing communication. All of these can be measured in real cost and time savings.
“The technology is ready to scale. It’s not rocket science anymore. It’s there and available,” he concluded.
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