Niantic Spatial & The Large Geospatial Model
/Many are declaring 2026 the year of the World Model. After years of language models teaching AI how to reason, the industry is racing to build models that can finally understand and predict the physical world itself.
We agree. The next phase of AI will be defined by not just reasoning and language, but by a grounded understanding of the physical world.
I also believe that for AI to truly inhabit our world, it cannot rely on imagination alone. The story of 2026 won't be focused on a single model type; it will be the combination of three distinct layers of intelligence: Large Language Models (LLMs), World Foundation Models (WFMs), and Large Geospatial Models (LGMs).