Counting Atoms

By Theo Saville — manufacturing, mechanical & robotics engineer, CEO of CloudNC.

The Universal Bottleneck Everyone is modeling the AI future in tokens and parameters. Almost nobody is counting the atoms. A four-part investigation into the physical bottlenecks beneath the trillion-dollar buildout. Four parts · March 2026
Terminal Value Software isn’t dying. It’s becoming air — everywhere, essential, and not something you can build a toll booth on. Where does venture-scale value live when the thing VCs have funded for 30 years costs nothing to build? March 2026
Your Agent Doesn’t Have a Capability Problem. It Has a Memory Problem. Your AI agent is brilliant for exactly one conversation. Then it wakes up tomorrow and makes the same mistake again. Three versions of a self-improvement system. The first two failed. March 2026
The Black Dot The AI adoption curve, visualized. Eight billion people. Find the ones building autonomous systems. March 2026