Real-Time World Models, Explained by a Founder Building Them

In October 2024, Alberto Taiuti was trying to solve a 3D asset problem and ran into a wall. The labeled data didn't exist. What he realized next reshaped the trajectory of his company. In this episode, Josh Liss (Head of Media & Entertainment at Nebius) sits down with Alberto Taiuti, CEO and Co-founder of Reactor, the developer platform for world models. They unpack what real-time world models actually are, why they're fundamentally different from the AI video tools most people have encountered, and why he believes the era of prompting is already winding down. Drawing on his background at Apple, where he worked on the Vision Pro, Alberto makes the case that interactive video changes what a developer platform has to be, why video models already understand 3D space (even though no one trained them to), and how shows, ads, and even software interfaces could be generated live, per user, in real time. 0:00 - Intro teaser: writing code, not prompts 0:25 - Guest intro & Reactor overview 0:47 - What is a world model? 2:19 - World models are regressive like LLMs 5:21 - Alberto's background & origin story 8:08 - The "aha" moment that changed everything 9:58 - How world models will impact media & entertainment 12:48 - "We only hire unreasonable people" — hiring philosophy 13:54 - Building in stealth: lessons from Apple 17:48 - GTA San Andreas shaped his entire career What You'll Learn What a world model is, in plain language, and how it differs from standard AI video generation. Alberto's philosophy for building in stealth mode and how that impacts his team Why Alberto believes interactive, real-time video brings code back to the center of AI development. The insight about video models and 3D that became the foundation of Reactor. Reactor's hiring philosophy and why "unreasonable" is the highest compliment at the company. Alberto's three-year prediction for how applications themselves get built.