First principle approaches to nuclear structure have seen huge breakthroughs in recent years. Due to combined advances of theories of the nuclear interaction (in particular for three-nucleon forces) and of computational many-body methods isotopes in the upper p-f-g9/2 shell are now under reach. The methods based on, Self-Consistent Green's Function (SCGF) theory gives a direct access to the spectral function for nucleon addition/removal, from which one can gain profound insights on several aspects of nuclear structure. I will review recent SCGF results for isotopes from Oxygen up to the Tin Chain, including predictions for masses, radii and dipole polarizabilities. New models for saturating chiral interactions, predict improved radii near the valley of stability but with a tendency to deviate for neutron rich isotopes. This is still leading to accurate studies, such as the prediction of a proton bubble in 34Si and order examples. Complementary work is being done to study nuclear forces derive directly from Lattice QCD simulation (by the Japanese HALQCD collaboration). Ab initio applications medium mass nuclei suggest a curious evolutions of the nuclear chart with respect to the variation of quark masses, with isolated islands of binding being generated first when the physical quark-mass limit is approached from above. Overall the outlook of ab initio theory, as a whole, is that nuclear forces are currently the largest source of uncertainties in predictions of exotic and neutron rich isotopes. While new developments are underway, there is already scope to exploit many-body approaches on several outstanding of nuclear physics problems.