Stage 8 — The Physical World (2026, in progress)

The last row of the grid never quite turns red — and that's the point.

• Poolside's reverse-execuhire letter — the world's problems split into

intelligence-bound ones (solvable by scaling cognition, soon commoditized

by open weights) and experiment-bound ones, where "no amount of

intelligence substitutes for real-world experimental feedback — 100,000

brilliant minds won't cure cancer without a wet lab." Their bet: AI's

durable value accrues to whoever owns the experimental loop — AI as "the

world's most valuable scientific discovery engine."

• CZ Biohub — imaging the Human Cell Atlas into a virtual cell, because

in silico is roughly 1000x cheaper and faster than in vivo, and extending

toward a virtual immune system.

• Chai, Xaira, Lila — data-center-shaped labs filling in the AI-for-

science stack.

The physical world is the one component that can't be fully synthesized —

only compressed, cell by cell, into models.