模型路线趋同之后，Physical AI的胜负手变了

TL;DR - 量子位 reports that as Physical AI technical routes converge (VLA, world models, foundation models), the bottleneck has shifted from model choice to building a closed research loop — and that Chinese autonomous-driving firm 元戎启行 (DeepRoute.ai) has launched Superfluid Lab, led by former DeepSeek core member and chief scientist 阮翀, to attack it.

• The article frames Physical AI as converging on two visible routes — VLA (vision-language-action, backed by Li Auto and XPeng) and world models (Huawei WEWA, NIO NWM) — plus an implicit third: a physical-world foundation ("基座") model trained on large-scale real data and adapted via few-shot/post-training.
• It identifies three "fracture layers": model↔data (scale alone doesn't yield world understanding; needs a feedback loop where model gaps drive data collection), vision↔action (perception/semantics must become continuous, real-time, verifiable control), and sim↔real (long-tail events and sensor degradation resist simulation; gains in sim don't transfer proportionally).
• Superfluid Lab (formed internally in May, publicized via the 7/29 《对话Superfluid》 post) centers on the foundation model, with VLA, world models/simulation, and AI Infra as supporting pillars; hiring targets three tracks — large-model algorithms, simulation algorithms (physics modeling, sim-to-real), and AI Infra.
• The core argument is organizational: a technical closed loop requires an organizational closed loop — flat structure, no fixed team boundaries, evaluation on final model capability rather than per-module metrics or product/version milestones. The piece is explicitly promotional (an OpenAI-2015 analogy is drawn) and offers no benchmarks or results; it concedes the approach "still needs time to validate."