The Physical Layer
Fabs, process nodes, packaging, HBM, equipment — why only a handful of companies can make any of it.
Three things I write about
The Bottleneck Watch
Power, cooling, materials, capacity. What is actually constraining AI buildouts, and what breaks next.
Physical AI Reality Check
What a robotics demo does and does not prove, and what would have to become true for it to ship.
All three end in the same place: what it means for margins, capex, and the companies you may own.
Recent writing
All posts →- Physical AI
What a 95% benchmark score actually means on a factory floor
A policy at 95% per step finishes a twenty-step task a third of the time. The best entry in a 2025 robotics benchmark completed 12% of its tasks.
- Physical AI
The three numbers humanoid demos never give you
Industrial buyers decide on cycle time, availability, and MTBF. Humanoid demos publish none of them — and the semiconductor industry has had a standard for two of the three since 1986.