Frontier scan
Concepts and methods that became important between April 2025 and October 2026, each placed in the pipeline with a readiness level and a verdict. Breakthrough marks qualitatively new capability with credible evidence; important marks enabling advances; incremental marks refinements. Company-reported results are labelled as such.
Timeline
Dates are announcement or arXiv-submission dates; arXiv-only items are placed to the nearest week. Click a label to jump to its entry.
Effect on the pipeline structure
The scan did not require new top-level stages. It added sub-areas inside existing stages: world models as data engines and simulators (05, 10), WAMs and steerable/in-context models (07), RL post-training of generalists (08, 13), reward and progress models (04), and runtime monitors (12). The biggest structural change is that world models now appear in five stages and the flywheel feeds RL directly, not only data collection.