North America AI Tour: 101 Practitioners in 15 Days: what are the key facts?

The author traveled to five North American cities in 15 days and spoke with 101 AI practitioners.

North America AI Tour: 101 Practitioners in 15 Days: what are the key facts?

Of the interviewees, 41 came from major companies such as Google, Meta, Nvidia, and OpenAI.

North America AI Tour: 101 Practitioners in 15 Days: what are the key facts?

Of the interviewees, 42 hold PhDs and 82 are under 35 years old.

North America AI Tour: 101 Practitioners in 15 Days: what are the key facts?

OpenAI released GPT-6 Astra and announced it can solve the Navier-Stokes equations.

North America AI Tour: 101 Practitioners in 15 Days: what are the key facts?

One researcher said that about 20 people can now advance a pretraining team that once required 200 people.

Physix Frontier · News Briefing Card (enbrief · Oct 11, 2026)

North America AI Tour: 101 Practitioners in 15 Days

KEY FACTS

The author traveled to five North American cities in 15 days and spoke with 101 AI practitioners.
Of the interviewees, 41 came from major companies such as Google, Meta, Nvidia, and OpenAI.
Of the interviewees, 42 hold PhDs and 82 are under 35 years old.
OpenAI released GPT-6 Astra and announced it can solve the Navier-Stokes equations.
One researcher said that about 20 people can now advance a pretraining team that once required 200 people.

KEY DATA

101Interviewees

41Big Tech Practitioners

42PhD Holders

82Under 35

PHYSIX OBSERVATION

Model capabilities are still improving rapidly, but organizational delivery and iteration speed in the physical world clearly lag behind. Frontline researchers' optimism centers on RL, environments, and architectural innovation, not simply piling on more data. The next stage's opportunity may lie not at the capability frontier, but in closing the gap between capability, delivery, and reality.

Source: enbrief original report ↗