Continual Learning Unlocks the $20.5B Hardware Bets

Both OpenAI's $6.5B audio device acquisition and Skild AI's $14B robotics brain depend on AI that accumulates context over time without catastrophic forgetting. December 2025 research in Nature Scientific Reports achieved 24% forgetting reduction through Neural ODE architectures, with three independent research teams converging on complementary solutions—suggesting production continual learning is 18-36 months from shipping.