The World Model Research Landscape
Who is building the machine that understands physics, and why they can’t agree on how
In September 2025, Danijar Hafner published a paper showing that an AI agent could mine diamonds in Minecraft without ever playing the game. It learned entirely from watching videos, then practiced inside its own imagination. Three months later, Yann LeCun left Meta to launch a startup that just closed a $1.03 billion seed round at a $3.5 billion valuat…
