World models are the next AI frontier

World models automate spatial intelligence, opening paths to robotics, interactive video, and advanced self-driving systems. The field could be hugely lucrative, but companies are staying quiet about it.

The big players are AMI and World Labs

Yann LeCun's AMI Labs and Fei-Fei Li's World Labs dominate the space with significant funding and buzz, but neither is focused on making money yet.

AMI Labs won't reveal its plans

Michael Rabbat, AMI's VP of World Models, deflected questions about the company's direction, saying they'll talk about products when ready. AMI is less than a year old.

“We'll talk about it when we're ready to talk about it.”

World Labs shows demos, not products

World Labs' Marble can create explorable video game environments and CGI effects, with some robotics applications. But the platform seems designed to show off capabilities rather than solve real problems.

Even suppliers don't know what's coming

Alex de Vigan, CEO of Physicl, supplies data to world model companies but doesn't know what they're building. He says more transparency would help him create better data.

“I wish they would tell us more. We could build more useful data if we knew what they were working on.”

AMI is exploring multiple industries

AMI has already tested world models in manufacturing, biomedicine, robotics, and AI software for doctors through its Nabla partnership. But it probably won't pursue all of them.

Secrecy delays inevitable competition

Announcing a specific product would attract competitors from other world model labs, neolabs, and giants like OpenAI and Anthropic. Staying quiet buys time before the market gets crowded.

It's a dark forest scenario

Like in science fiction, companies don't know who else is in the woods, so they stay quiet to avoid attracting attention. The same easy fundraising that lets them build secretly also funds their future competitors.