The 2026 listing 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 listing of breakthroughs, however all had been intently thought-about, and we predict they’re value understanding about.
Male contraceptives
There are a number of new remedies within the pipeline for males who’re sexually lively and want to stop being pregnant—probably offering them with a substitute for condoms or vasectomies.
Two of these remedies at the moment are being examined in scientific 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 not too long ago named to our Innovators Underneath 35 listing). A once-a-day tablet can 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 way of scientific trials—assuming all goes effectively.
World fashions
World fashions have change into the new new factor in AI in current months. Although they’re troublesome to outline, these fashions are typically educated on movies or spatial information and purpose to provide 3D digital worlds from easy prompts. They mirror elementary ideas, 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 actually gaining momentum. Famend AI researchers together with Yann LeCun and Fei-Fei Li have launched corporations 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 house.
