The 2026 checklist will come out on January 12—so keep tuned. Within the meantime, I wished to share among the applied sciences from this 12 months’s reject pile, as a window into our decision-making course of.
These 4 applied sciences gained’t be on our 2026 checklist of breakthroughs, however all have been intently thought-about, and we predict they’re value figuring out about.
Male contraceptives
There are a number of new remedies within the pipeline for males who’re sexually energetic and want to forestall being pregnant—doubtlessly offering them with a substitute for condoms or vasectomies.
Two of these remedies are actually being examined in medical trials by an organization known as Contraline. One is a gel that males would rub on their shoulder or higher arm as soon as a day to suppress sperm manufacturing, and the opposite is a tool designed to dam sperm throughout ejaculation. (Kevin Eisenfrats, Contraline’s CEO, was just lately named to our Innovators Below 35 checklist). A once-a-day capsule can also be in early-stage trials with the agency YourChoice Therapeutics.
Although it’s thrilling to see this progress, it can nonetheless take a number of years for any of those remedies to make their manner by medical trials—assuming all goes properly.
World fashions
World fashions have turn out to be the recent new factor in AI in current months. Although they’re tough to outline, these fashions are typically educated on movies or spatial knowledge and goal to supply 3D digital worlds from easy prompts. They replicate elementary rules, like gravity, that govern our precise world. The outcomes might be utilized in recreation design or to make robots extra succesful by serving to them perceive their bodily environment.
Regardless of some disagreements on precisely what constitutes a world mannequin, the thought is definitely gaining momentum. Famend AI researchers together with Yann LeCun and Fei-Fei Li have launched firms to develop them, and Li’s startup World Labs launched its first model final month. And Google made an enormous splash with the launch of its Genie 3 world mannequin earlier this 12 months.
Although these fashions are shaping as much as be an thrilling new frontier for AI within the 12 months forward, it appeared untimely to deem them a breakthrough. However undoubtedly watch this area.
