Physix FrontierPhysix Frontier · News Briefing Card (TMTPost · Oct 10, 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.
- 41 of the interviewees came from major companies such as Google, Meta, Nvidia, and OpenAI.
- 42 of the interviewees hold PhDs, and 82 are under the age of 35.
- OpenAI released GPT-6 Astra and announced that 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
101 peopleInterviewees
41 peopleBig Tech Practitioners
42 peoplePhD Holders
82 peopleUnder 35
PHYSIX OBSERVATION
Model capabilities are still improving rapidly, but organizational delivery and iteration speed in the physical world are clearly lagging behind. The optimism of frontline researchers is concentrated in RL, environments, and architectural innovation, rather than simply piling on more data. The next stage of opportunity may not lie at the frontier of capability, but in closing the gap between capability, delivery, and reality.
Source: TMTPost report