Google announced at Google I/O 2025 that it is rebranding Project Starline, its corporate-focused teleconferencing platform that uses 3D imaging, and recommitting to shipping it this year.
Starline, now called Google Beam, will come to “early customers” like Deloitte, Salesforce, Citadel, NEC, and Duolingo later in 2025 via Google’s previously announced partnership with HP, Google said. When Beam launches, it’ll integrate with Google Meet and other popular videoconferencing services, like Zoom, the company said.
Beam uses a combination of software and hardware, including a six-camera array and custom light field display, to let a user converse with someone as if they were in the same meeting room. An AI model converts video from the cameras, which are positioned at different angles and pointed toward the user, into a 3D rendering.
Google claims that Beam is capable of “near-perfect” millimeter-level head tracking and 60-frames-per-second video streaming. With Google Meet, Beam also offers an AI-powered real-time speech translation mode that maintains the voice, tone, and expressions of the original speaker.
“The result [is that Beam is] a very natural and a deeply immersive conversational experience,” Google CEO Sundar Pichai said during a press briefing.
The question is, with many businesses transitioning to fully in-office setups post-pandemic, will there be much demand for Beam, which initially seemed aimed mainly at hybrid offices that frequently conference with remote workers? Despite the fact that research has failed to draw definitive conclusions about remote workers’ productivity, the perception among many in senior management — especially in tech — is that work-from-home is something of a failed experiment.
Some customers may be able to justify Beam for office-to-office virtual conferences alone. In 2023, Google claimed that around 100 companies, including WeWork and T-Mobile, were testing prototype versions of the tech.
Google said Tuesday it’s working with channel partners such as Diversified and AVI-SPL, as well as Zoom, to bring Beam to organizations “worldwide.”