World Models, Spatial Intelligence & Physical AI Night
About the Event
Spatial Frontier Club is a curated Bay Area community for people working across fields that intersect with spatial intelligence, including world models, robotics, embodied AI, simulation, 3D vision, synthetic data, and physical-world reasoning.
As AI moves beyond language and screens, one of the next major frontiers is the ability for machines to understand, model, predict, and interact with the physical world. This shift is bringing together researchers, engineers, founders, and investors working on the systems, data, models, and infrastructure needed for the next generation of Physical AI.
For our first gathering, we’re bringing together a focused group of people actively building, researching, or investing in this frontier.
The format will be lightweight and conversational. We’ll begin with a few short speaker perspectives to set the tone, followed by open discussion and time to connect with relevant peers. The goal is not to create another broad AI meetup, but to build a more focused room for people thinking deeply about spatial intelligence and AI’s physical-world frontier.
Who Should Attend
This gathering is intended for people working in or closely around:
Spatial intelligence
World models
Robotics and embodied AI
Simulation and synthetic environments
3D vision, 3D graphics, and 3D data
Robot learning and foundation models
VLA / VLN systems
Physical AI infrastructure
Spatial computing and physical-world reasoning
We welcome researchers, engineers, technical founders, builders, investors, and ecosystem partners whose work directly touches these areas.
To keep the room focused and high-signal, capacity will be limited and registration may be reviewed.
Event Format
6:00 PM to 6:30 PM
Arrival, food, drinks, and casual networking
6:30 PM to 6:40 PM
Opening remarks: why Spatial Frontier Club exists
6:40 PM to 7:20 PM
Short speaker perspectives
7:20 PM to 8:00 PM
Open discussion and audience reflections
8:00 PM to 9:00 PM
Social networking and continued conversation
Discussion Themes
We’d love to hear your thoughts on questions such as:
What is still the biggest bottleneck for Physical AI?
Are world models limited more by data, architecture, or evaluation?
How important are synthetic environments for future embodied systems?
What is still missing between prediction and action?
What does the next generation of Physical AI infrastructure look like?
Where is spatial intelligence most likely to matter in the next wave of AI systems?
Featured Speakers
Founder of a stealth AI startup backed by DCVC. Previously a Research Scientist at Meta Superintelligence Lab, where she worked on large-scale foundation model training systems, and a researcher at the University of Michigan focused on machine learning systems. Her work sits at the infrastructure layer behind frontier AI, spanning scalable training, model/data pipelines, and systems design. Amber will speak on “Closing the Loop: ML Systems for Real-Time Embodied Intelligence,” sharing how real-time feedback, system design, and scalable infrastructure come together to enable the next generation of Physical AI.
2. Daniel Ho
AI @ Project Prometheus. Previously Director of Evaluation at 1X Technologies, where he worked on world models and large-scale evaluation pipelines for general-purpose robotics. Daniel has also worked on robotics, perception, and machine learning at Waymo and Everyday Robots X, with research spanning robot learning, sim-to-real transfer, imitation reinforcement learning, manipulation, perception, and representation learning. His work sits at the intersection of building robotics policies and understanding whether they can generalize beyond controlled demos into real physical environments. Daniel will share perspectives on learning methods in robotics, including locomotion and manipulation, and discuss how stronger evaluation frameworks and world-model-based evaluators can help bridge simulation, policy learning, and real-world deployment.
3. Anthony Zhao
Head of North America at SpatialVerse / Manycore Tech, where he works across AI, robotics, simulation, and 3D technology partnerships to explore how spatial data infrastructure can support Physical AI. His work sits at the intersection of technical strategy, frontier AI partnerships, synthetic data, and 3D simulation, giving him a market-facing view into the data and infrastructure gaps behind physical-world intelligence. Anthony will share perspectives on why spatial reasoning remains a key missing layer in AI systems, and how structured scene representations, physically grounded spatial data, and high-quality 3D environments can help connect visual intelligence, simulation, and real-world interaction.
About the Hosts
Mission Robotics is building the beating heart of robotics in the Mission, bringing together the leading builders, founders, and mad scientists making embodied AI a reality. If your robot got you kicked out of a WeWork, we want you here. www.missionrobotics.ai
Registration
This is a curated gathering with limited capacity. Please register with your current affiliation and a short note on how your work connects to spatial intelligence, world models, robotics, simulation, embodied AI, or Physical AI.