Frontier Radar #5: If AGI is so close, why is everyone leaving? The neolabs and their bets

This newsletter surveys 27 independently founded, research-driven "neolabs" in the US and Europe, grouped by their primary technical bet, and contrasts their founders' doubts about today's recipe of ever-larger language models with claims from Jensen Huang and Greg Brockman that AGI has arrived. The first group targets continual learning and learning from few examples (Adaption, Core Automation, Flapping Airplanes, Ineffable Intelligence, Ndea, Safe Superintelligence), while the second bets language alone is insufficient and pursues spatial and physical intelligence (AMI, Black Forest Labs, General Intuition, Physical Intelligence, World Labs). It notes the funding behind these labs, including Nvidia's reported five billion dollar investment in SSI and AMD's planned acquisition of World Labs for about 8.2 billion dollars, and asks whether they can deliver something the big players lack.