$5.3B Physical AI Capital Wall: Infrastructure for Models That Don't Exist Yet

Q1 2026 witnessed unprecedented capital concentration in physical AI: AMI Labs raised $1.03B for JEPA world models, robotics companies deployed $1.2B+ in a single week, and the DOE committed $293M to AI-for-science. This capital structure is inverted from the LLM era — massive deployment capital accumulates ahead of the foundational models it depends on. JEPA and DVA remain pre-commercial while Mind Robotics raises at $2B valuations. Robotics companies are deploying capital dependent on world model capabilities still 2-3 years from production, creating a flywheel where proprietary robotics data becomes the training ground for future general models.