AI article
This AI entrepreneur is developing agents that can plan ahead for the unexpected
Publisher description: Danijar Hafner’s office in San Francisco’s SoMa district sits mostly empty. His brand-new startup is still in stealth mode and doesn’t even have its name on the door. On the day I visited, earlier this year, there’s only one other person there, and little in the way of furniture. But what it lacks in decor,…
MIT Technology Review | Sep 8, 2026 | Mat Honan
Automated excerpt
Danijar Hafner has a startup in stealth and a long track record of teaching AI agents about our world. September 8, 2026Age:31Affiliation:Google DeepMind (former)RACHEL BUJALSKI Danijar Hafner’s office in San Francisco’s SoMa district sits mostly empty. He develops world models—AI models designed to emulate physical reality—and trains agents within them. That allows agents—or the robots they’re embedded in—to navigate unfamiliar situations IRL. “I get to interact with a lot of really smart people in research at Google, and he easily sits in the top half of 1%.
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