As the AI industry looks beyond language models, Nvidia is betting big on the buzzy new technology powering physical AI: world models.
At Nvidia GTC Taipei at Computex, the company unveiled Cosmos 3, a new generalist world foundation model that it calls a “fully open omnimodel,” capable of reasoning and generation across text, video, images, ambient sound and action. This iteration of the Cosmos world model family builds on a previous generations by providing improved generalization capabilities, which is a major barrier to physical AI development and deployment.
“We wanted to build this Cosmo 3 model to help physical AI developers to build more generalizable physical AI models,” Ming-Yu Liu, Nvidia’s VP of Cosmos Labs,told The Deep View.
Cosmos 3 debuts a number of world model innovations, Liu said:
The model utilizes a new architecture called “mixture-of-transformers,” which combines the best aspects of two types of transformers: one for reasoning and one for generation. This enables it to understand object interactions, motion, and spatiotemporal relationships before generating video or action paths. Cosmos 3 also doesn’t treat just one kind of data as a first-class citizen, said Liu. Instead, being omnimodal, it reasons with and generates “image, video, sound, and action, together with text,” he said. Additionally, Cosmos 3 is trained on one of the largest multimodal datasets for physical AI, spanning 20 trillion tokens, 1 billion images and 400 million authentic and synthetic videos.
The model comes in several sizes: Super, the larger model for high-quality physics and accuracy, and Nano, for more efficient, quick generation needs, both of which are available now. Edge, which offers real-time inference for edge computing, will be available soon.
The models are also open-source, which Liu said offers developers more control and usability in physical AI development, a process that can be “challenging to do with API assets only.” That allows enterprises to run them locally, customize them for their needs, and better control data security.
Because the foundation models themselves are “just a starting point for physical AI developers,” the goal is to integrate these models into ecosystems to provide a foundation for solving critical problems, he said.
Cosmos 3 is just one step in the right direction in solving one of physical AI’s most pressing challenges. “We believe that the key problem to solve in physical AI is the generalization capability of the agent,” Liu said. “To be clear, [Cosmos] is not yet solving the problem, but I think this architecture provides a great foundation to solve what I think is the holy grail in robotics.”
With Cosmos, Nvidia is feeding the open model ecosystem, both for the benefit of the ecosystem and for its own benefit. Along with providing the foundation for developers to create what Liu calls robotics’ “holy grail”, any opportunity to feed a market that will inevitably demand more compute is an opportunity for Nvidia to make money in the end, as well as potentially make its own chips better through extreme hardware co-design. And while the benefits would extend back to Nvidia, a rising tide lifts all boats. As the industry broadly embraces the promise of physical AI, Nvidia’s sharing of its resources and innovation will help stimulate further innovation.
Iran inaugurates West Asia’s biggest cancer treatment hospital – Iran Cancer Institute at Imam Khomeini Hospital Complex in Tehran The state-of-the-art hospital features 37 specialized departments, advanced imaging, radiotherapy units, and 96 chemotherapy beds. #IranFirst
AND:
BREAST CANCER
It is time to leave war aside
University of Tehran scientists develop nanotheranostic system using iron oxide nanoparticles and a novel peptide to treat breast cancer
It improves MRI and SPECT imaging, inhibits tumor growth, and could support advanced radiotherapy and chemotherapy treatments.
A 12th-century castle built during the Crusades in Lebanon has been seized by Israeli forces in what’s been described as the deepest incursion into Lebanon for more than 25 years.
The historic site, known as Beaufort Castle or Qalʿat al-Shaqīf, sits atop a striking rocky outcrop in a commanding position on the edge of the Litani gorge, boasting spectacular views across southern Lebanon. It has historically been a very strategic site, especially during the Crusades.
A view of Beaufort Castle in southern Lebanon as seen from northern Israel this week. AP Photo/Ariel Schalit/AAP
What were the Crusades?
The Crusades is the name given to a series of military expeditions, beginning in the late 11th century, of Latin Christians from across Europe to a range of destinations, most famously the Holy Land.
The Crusades were armed pilgrimages, representing a fusion of ideas about warfare and spirituality.
Crusades would be called for by a pope, who would promise participants spiritual rewards if they took the Crusade vow and undertook these campaigns.
The aims and goals of Crusades changed over time as the geopolitical landscape changed. The First Crusade – called in 1095 CE – had a broad goal of “liberating” the holy sites of Jerusalem from the Seljuk Turks, a Sunni Muslim group in power in Asia Minor at the time.
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The Crusaders also wanted to render military aid to Eastern Christians in the region.
But what distinguishes the Crusades from other military campaigns was that this was seen as a spiritually meritorious form of warfare.
The First Crusade established the Crusader States, with what came to be known as the Kingdom of Jerusalem at its heart.
Who built Beaufort Castle and why?
This site’s time as a Crusader castle began in 1139 CE with the Franks – the label used at the time to denote western European settlers in the east.
When the Franks arrived at the site, it was probably already being used in some significant way because of its strategic position.
The king of Jerusalem at this time was Fulk, who was a Frank (the Kingdom of Jerusalem had already existed for 40 years before he captured the Beaufort Castle site).
He began construction of Beaufort Castle (Old French for “beautiful fortress”) in about 1139 CE. Ultimately, it became a large castle over two levels, roughly triangular in shape. As is often the case for buildings from this era, it has had parts added on and destroyed over time.
Latin Christians saw it as part of a network of fortified castles they hoped would help shore up Frankish settlement in the area.
Enter Saladin
The next key character in the history of Beaufort Castle is Saladin. He is among the most famous figures in Crusades history, in the region and in Islamic history more broadly.
He was of Kurdish origin, and by the time Beaufort Castle was controlled by Latin Christians, he was sultan of Egypt and Syria.
By all accounts, Saladin appears to have been a charismatic, canny leader and military practitioner. He was a key figure in Muslim military efforts against the Latin Christians.
Saladin captured Beaufort Castle in 1190 CE. This was part of a longer story of success for Saladin in what has been called the “counter-Crusade”. A few years earlier, he had won some significant victories, including at the famous Battle of Hattin (depicted in Ridley Scott’s 2005 film, Kingdom of Heaven).
Saladin also captured the city of Jerusalem in 1187, which was an enormous loss for the Crusaders.
So the Beaufort capture was part of the bigger picture of Saladin’s spectacular journey of conquest in this region around this time. He died not long after in 1193 CE, and the castle remained in Muslim hands until 1240 CE.
After that, the castle went back to Latin Christian ownership as part of a treaty with Theobald I of Navarre in the Barons’ Crusade. Ultimately, the castle passed to the Knights Templar in 1260 CE.
Who were the Knights Templar?
The Knights Templar was a military religious order made up of hybrid warrior-monks, founded in 1118 in the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Their initial remit was to defend Christian pilgrims visiting holy sites, but their role changed over time.
They lived according to a religious rule, known as the Templar Rule, and they took vows of chastity, poverty and obedience to live in communities according to their vows.
What was unusual about these monks was they were also highly trained warriors, especially skilled as mounted knights, as both heavy and light cavalry.
The kings of Jerusalem soon came to rely on them for military advice and as a highly trained standing army.
They were viewed as having the power to fight on both a spiritual and earthly battlefield, a kind of holy super soldiers. According to their patron, Bernard of Clairvaux, the Templar’s
soul is protected by the armour of faith just as his body is protected by armour of steel.
Kings and nobles increasingly began to donate land and riches to the Templars. They eventually became an international organisation with significant wealth across Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean (although they would eventually be tried for heresy).
The Knights Templar held Beaufort Castle for only eight years, before the site was returned to Muslim rule for centuries. In modern history, it has been controlled by Lebanon – until its capture by Israeli forces this week.
This is a region with an incredibly nuanced and complex history, and it remains that way today.
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Nicholas Thompson has been one of the definers of the digital revolution in all of its impact on our life. After graduating from Stanford and engaging in freelance writing, he became editor of NewYorker.com. Later, he became Editor-in-Chief of Wired as the power of social media became more pervasive. Now he is the CEO of The Atlantic as artificial intelligence becomes more involved in our daily life.
Thompson has written two books. The first was The Hawk and the Dove about Paul Nitze, the hawk, and George Kennan, the dove. Nitze was Thompson’s maternal grandfather.
The second, published in 2025, is The Running Ground about Thompson’s life as a serious and successful marathon runner. It is much more than a book about running. It is about his cancer struggle and the emotional story of his relationship to his father. Thompson makes running central to his identity and attitudes about competition, fear, ambition, and endurance. Nicholas Thompson has achieved great success, but in The Running Ground uses his success in running to explore not only the joy of victory but also its cost.
As we learn more about the progress in artificial intelligence, it is a moment to consider its value and its risk.
We will talk about many things with Nicholas Thompson, including running as a metaphor for life, his relationship with his father, the digital revolution, social media, and the impact of artificial intelligence on all of us.
This column, which got a sneak peek over the weekend in Jim’s C-Suite newsletter, is our long look at America’s two-decade road to today’s mood. Tomorrow, we’ll unfurl Jim’s idea to help CEOs and other leaders navigate this moment.
Click here to watch a “Behind the Curtain” video of Jim and me discussing how we got here — and what’s next.
We’re living through the most disorienting societal moment since World War II. Almost nobody in a position of power is explaining why, or what to do about it.
This is so much bigger than politics. It touches our jobs, our companies, our communities and our realities.
Why it matters: By most objective measures, it’s an extraordinary time to be alive. Americans are wealthier, safer and longer-lived than at any earlier point in history. U.S. total wealth has soared. Violent crime sank to a 20-year low and is still falling. Life expectancy just hit 79 years — the highest in American history. The country produces more energy than ever after four straight record years.
And yet: University of Michigan consumer sentiment just hit its lowest reading in a half-century. Gallup finds most people think things will only get worse. Trust in every major institution — government, media, organized religion, higher education, science — is at or near record lows, both Gallup and the Edelman Trust Barometer find.
The gap between reality and feeling is the story of our era. A three-part shock helps tell it:
Social media’s rise.
The chaos of COVID.
The rise of AI, political extremism and information bubbles in the aftermath of both.
This produced a perpetually Rattled Generation, one too unsteady and uncertain to believe things are truly good or getting better. That’s new for a typically optimistic, can-do society.
It’s hard to see this changing anytime soon for one big reason: For the first time, no one — even us, sometimes — knows what to believe or who to trust. Our brains are now constantly calculating: Is this AI? Is it a bot? Can I trust this, share this or act on it?
Only by making sense of how we got here can we begin to fix it:
Shock 1: The Social Era
We trace the inflection to 2007, the year we helped launch Politico. The same month, Apple unleashed the iPhone. Twitter was a growing infant. Facebook crossed 50 million users. In roughly 18 months, the infrastructure for an algorithmically amplified social life fell into place.
Suddenly, anyone, anywhere, anytime could say anything on a public platform for free at scale and watch as others engage or enrage.
What followed wasn’t a coincidence. Anxiety, loneliness and institutional distrust rose in near-perfect parallel with smartphone penetration and screen time. It’s a correlation so consistent across age groups, income levels and democracies that we strain to call it anything but causation.
The institutions made it easy. Church sex abuse scandals. Media blunders. The 2008–09 financial crisis and its unpunished architects. Iraq WMD claims. Academic failures. Epstein.
Each, on its own, would have been a generational wound. Together, they landed one after another on people already disoriented by the speed of technological change. Citizens trusted institutions until those institutions failed them over and over, in public and up close. Once broken, that trust never reset.
The result: People didn’t abandon community. They migrated it, both closer to home and closer to their screens. Local leaders. Their own employer. People they know in person. Their phone.
Shock 2: COVID
Just as the country was trying to get its footing after the social media gut punch, COVID hit. Its effects went beyond a public health crisis, building an isolation and distrust machine by severing the in-person bonds holding people together. Churches closed. Local businesses shuttered. Offices emptied. Youth sports stopped. The very refuges people retreated to after their trust in big institutions collapsed were gone overnight.
For millions of people, COVID stripped away the coping mechanisms they’d built to survive the first decade of digital disruption. It produced in our young people what psychologist Jonathan Haidt called the Anxious Generation. But the problems were hardly contained to one age group. They hit everyone.And we never really recovered. We got vaccines and reopenings. We did not get a restoration of the social fabric. Loneliness was classified by the U.S. surgeon general as a public health epidemic. The share of Americans who said they had no close friends quadrupled from 1990 to 2021. Young men, in particular, have retreated from nearly every traditional institution — civic, religious, educational, relational.Column continues below.
2. Shock 3: The aftermath
Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios
As if social media and COVID weren’t enough, everyone got smacked with three once-in-a-generation tectonic changes — all at once, and all worse since COVID.
Politics grew more omnipresent and mean. Terminally online politicians played to terminally online audiences, with algorithms egging everyone on. The rest got stuck in this feedback loop, which makes people seem nuttier and more hateful than most are.
AI exploded across screens and work. Everything started moving faster everywhere — how and what you learn, how you work and how you get and share information. All have changed, and keep changing. Our species isn’t wired to evolve at this velocity.
People flocked to smaller and smaller information bubbles based on their age, politics and jobs. Suddenly, we had infinite “realities” instead of a shared one. Now, two people sitting next to each other on a plane likely get their “news” on platforms the other person has never visited and trust people the other person never heard of. Same plane. Adjacent seats. Two different worlds.
Short of hiding in the woods without the internet, all of this was unavoidable for all of us, all the time.
The result of this 20-year daisy chain of events: a public with less hope, less trust, fewer friends and fewer people to look up to for help.
What comes next: This is hard to read, much less make sense of. But it also provides a basis to think through where we go from here. It might not be the reality we want, but it’s the one we’ve got. You only change it by reverse-engineering it to spot the glitches and patterns and cures.
We clearly need to restore trust in some binding leaders and institutions, lift competent people above the noisy ones, ease people through the AI transformation, find more common ground and common truth, and shift attention to what works, not just what sucks.
The bottom line: The repair won’t come from politicians or media or brighter economic data. It’ll come from government, religious institutions, communities, schools, parents, and business repairing the small threads that weave a complicated country together.
We’ll end on the happy note we flicked at up top: We’re actually in exponentially better shape than people think, and than our rival nations. America’s advantages are clear and real. We just need people to see this clearly again, and build back and up from there.Watch/share our video … Share this column.Tell us about your experience: jim@axios.com, mike@axios.com.If you’re a CEO or on a CEO’s team: Ask to join Jim’s new weekly Axios C-Suite newsletter.
Column continues below.
Shock 3: The aftermath
If you’re a CEO or on a CEO’s team: 
