Appetite to Touch Grass and Build Donuts

This week: Building with AI, software-defined product adjacencies, donut solid-state battery test by VTT, fossil-free chemistry catalysts, embedded robotics AI, MWC/AW/CONEXPO, Semis/Space raise big $

Mar 08, 2026

Shop Talk

Capturing this week’s zeitgeist

In the coming decade, the most dominant enterprises won’t just be those with the largest balance sheets, but those fueled by a workforce with an insatiable appetite for building. The modern builder’s toolkit has evolved with AI and during this exponential rate of progress, more physical world activities like manufacturing will be soon be accessible to AI. Here’s a few already upon us:

Personalized Business Systems: “100% of my code is written by Claude Code”, Boris Cherny of Anthropic /YouTube/. Your business process and systems can be fully written by AI agents while also incorporating AI agents to respond to market signals, shop floor data, and supply chain interruptions in real-time. The only limitation is how you want to design your processes.
Orchestrating Autonomous Labs: Self-optimizing hardware that can iterate on physical prototypes while the team sleeps.
Hyper-Personalized Go-to-Market: The building doesn’t end at the shipping dock. AI allows builders to create messaging tailored so it feels like a 1-to-1 conversation with every prospect and customer.

🗣️ Shift Turnover

Once upon a time, Ford built airplanes and television sets, and General Motors built buses and locomotives. In general, car companies seemed to be a lot more ambitious then. All of that’s gone out the window. What are your thoughts on why that is and whether it could change?
I think it’s about to change more than people expect. As you redefine a software-defined product, with different levels of electrification, it turns out the electric architecture we’re building for our vehicles isn’t so different than electric architecture for a drone, isn’t so different than the electric architecture for VTOL (vertical takeoff and landing aircraft). It also turns out that as we start building batteries and getting closer to tech, we can build batteries, just like we built ventilators in COVID or bombers in World War II. And some of these adjacencies are very attractive businesses, number one.
Ford CEO, Jim Farley /Car and Driver/

"As a founder in CAD, you must answer one simple question: 'What will be possible to design and manufacture with my solution or what important workflows will be possible that are impossible today?'" /István Csanády on X/

New in 2026: We are gifting a 1-year paid subscription to the first person to identify the content link AND cultural reference to the title/subject line of this week’s digest. Comment on this post with your guess before next week’s digest is released to be eligible!

Last week’s answer: Cards Against Humanity to Give Tariff Refunds to Buyers Who ‘Overpaid’ /Bloomberg/ and AI-driven factories /Schneider Electric/. Congrats to Arjun Mehrotra on winning!

Assembly Line

This week’s Industry 5.0 breakthroughs and frontier technologies of the built world.

🔋 Donut Solid-State Battery: High Temperature Performance Test

Donut Lab has commissioned the internationally renowned VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland to conduct independent measurements of the battery’s performance and key characteristics. Unless otherwise stated, all tests presented here have been conducted by VTT. Full reports will be published alongside detailed video documentation that walks through the procedures, showcases the test setups, and explains the results.

Read more at Donut Labs and Two Bit da Vinci

EV Rivals Are Closing In—Can QuantumScape and Volkswagen Bring Solid-State Batteries to Market First? /Inc./ QuantumScape just announced a production milestone for its solid-state batteries.

⚗️ Using Individual Atoms to Achieve Fossil-free Chemistry

Methanol is a key starting material for chemical products. Researchers from ETH Zurich can now produce this precursor from CO2 and hydrogen with high efficiency by using isolated metal atoms as catalysts.

“Our new catalyst has a single atom architecture, in which isolated active metal atoms are anchored on the surface of a specially developed support material,” Pérez-Ramírez explains. In conventional catalysts, on the other hand, metals are usually present as aggregates, usually small particles. Although these particles are tiny, they often contain between a hundred and several thousand metal atoms.

🦾🧠 Bringing Robotics AI to Embedded Platforms: Dataset Recording, VLA Fine‑Tuning, and On‑Device Optimizations

Bringing VLA models to embedded platforms is not a matter of model compression, but a complex systems engineering problem requiring architectural decomposition, latency-aware scheduling, and hardware-aligned execution. Addressing these challenges is essential to translate recent advances in multimodal foundation models into practical and deployable embedded robotic systems.

This guide presents NXP’s hands‑on best practices for recording reliable robotic datasets, fine‑tuning VLA policies (ACT and SmolVLA), and highlights the real-time performance that NXP i.MX95 achieves after optimization.

New Product Introduction

Highlighting new and innovative facilities, processes, products, and services

🎪📶 Qualcomm Brings On‑Premises Industrial AI and Connectivity to a Siemens Factory Model at MWC Barcelona

At MWC Barcelona, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. and Siemens AG showcased a technology implementation to accelerate the autonomous factory production. Qualcomm Technologies will be demonstrating on‑premise intelligence with AI integrated into a Siemens autonomous factory model. Together, the companies showcase the integration of private Industrial 5G connectivity with edge AI-based use-cases to enable more dynamic, efficient and intelligent autonomous production.

The demonstration includes:

An Automated Guided Vehicle (AGV) connected over a Siemens private Industrial 5G Network powered by Qualcomm technology, transporting materials through the factory model.
Assembly performed by a robotic arm communicating with the AGV and production cells.
An AI agent is running locally on Siemens IPC hardware equipped with the Qualcomm Cloud AI 100 Card, analyzing system state in real time to determine the root cause and recommend corrective actions.
Additional AI‑driven tasks powered by Qualcomm Cloud AI 100 Accelerator Card such as real‑time process quality inspection and on‑premises industrial intelligence.

🎪🦾 Tesollo and Techman Robot unveil robot for high-mix, low-volume production

At the 2026 Smart Factory & Automation Industry Exhibition, also known as Automation World or AW, Techman Robot Korea and Tesollo Inc. presented an articulated, multi-jointed grasping system they said is optimized for high-mix, low-volume production.

🎪🚜🧠 Driving Excellence Without Drivers: Vale Brucutu’s Shingo Prize Journey

Vale Brucutu Mine Autonomous Haulage System has been awarded the prestigious Shingo Prize— the world’s highest recognition for operational excellence. Located in Minas Gerais, Brazil, Vale Brucutu Mine Autonomous Haulage, one of Vale’s flagship operations, is home to one of the largest autonomous haulage fleets in the world. Take a glimpse into Brucutu’s journey of innovation, team empowerment, and commitment to continuous improvement that led to earning this renowned distinction from the Shingo Institute.

Yimin coal mine: what 100 AI-driven electric trucks taught the mining sector /Mining Technology/
Caterpillar Transforms the Construction Worksite with Advanced Technology, Services and Solutions at CONEXPO-CON/AGG 2026 /Caterpillar/
HD Construction Equipment Unveils Next-Generation Models at CONEXPO 2026, Accelerating Expansion into Advanced Markets /PR Newswire/

J. Mintzmyer of Value Investor's Edge discusses shipping stocks with the current situation going on with global shipping /YouTube/. Traders Warn $100 Oil Is Imminent If Iran War Keeps Raging /Bloomberg/

Business Transactions

This week’s top funding events, acquisitions, and partnerships across industrial value chains.

Humanoid Hype May Not Lead to Widescale Manufacturer Investment /Assembly/
The Rise and Fall of a 3-D Printing Empire /NYT/. Desktop Metal, a billion-dollar start-up, promised to revolutionize manufacturing. It went bankrupt, and now has much humbler ambitions as the 3-D printing industry takes a sober turn.

🇯🇵💿 Rapidus Secures 267.6 Billion Yen in Funding from Japan Government and Private Sector Companies

Rapidus Corporation announced that it has completed a funding round totaling 267.6 billion yen (equivalent to $1.7 billion USD) from the Japan government and private sector companies. Rapidus will continue to secure funding through capital increases and loans from both public and private sources. This strategic funding plan will enable the company to steadily progress from its current R&D phase to mass production of 2nm logic semiconductors by 2027.

🇪🇸🚀 PLD Space secures €180M Series C to accelerate global access to space

PLD Space, an international space transportation company, has closed a €180 million Series C equity funding round led by the renowned Japanese manufacturer Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, alongside with other investors. The Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, through the Centre for the Development of Technology and Innovation (CDTI) and its INNVIERTE fund, and the Spanish public funds management company COFIDES, through its FOCO investment fund, have co-invested in this round. Ultimately, the European renowned Spanish fund Nazca Capital, via Nazca Aeroespacial y Defensa INNIVERTE I FCR Fund, close the round.

With over €350 million raised to date, this financing advances PLD Space’s strategic roadmap, supporting its transition to commercial operations and the scaling of its industrial and launch capabilities. PLD Space now consolidates its position among a select group of private companies worldwide developing complete launch systems, enabling global access to space supported by a strategic network of worldwide locations.

🇺🇸🧑‍💻 Nominal Valued at $1B as Founders Fund Leads $80M Acceleration Round

Nominal, the connected testing and operations platform for hardware engineering teams, announced an $80 million Series B-2 Acceleration Round led by Founders Fund, with participation from existing investors Sequoia Capital, Lux Capital, General Catalyst, Lightspeed, and Red Glass. The round values Nominal at $1 billion.

Nominal provides a unified platform that connects the entire hardware data supply chain — from instrumentation and data acquisition through analysis, reporting, and operational decisions. Its customers include teams building satellites, aircraft, autonomous and performance vehicles, energy infrastructure, and advanced defense systems — programs where reliability, speed, and operational clarity are critical.

Read more at GlobeNewswire and /Josh Wolfe on X/

🇺🇸🦾🧠 OpenAI’s Former Research Chief Aims to Automate Manufacturing With AI

✍️ Authors: Meghan Bobrowsky, Kate Clark

Arda, the new startup co-founded by Bob McGrew, is raising $70 million at a valuation of $700 million, according to people familiar with the matter. Founders Fund and Accel are coleading the round, with participation from Khosla Ventures and XYZ Venture Capital. The company’s round hasn’t yet closed, and terms of the deal could still change.
Arda is developing an AI and software platform, including a video model that can analyze footage from factory floors and use it to train robots to run factories autonomously, the people said. The company’s software will coordinate machines and humans across the entire production process, from product design and manufacturability to finished goods coming off the line.

🇦🇺⚗️ PlasmaLeap Raises A$30 Million to Accelerate Zero-Emissions Production of Fertilisers and Fuels

PlasmaLeap Technologies, the Australian company pioneering zero-emissions production of ammonia and nitric acid, has secured almost A$30 million (US$20 million) in new funding from a group of strategic and institutional investors, which was led by the Gates Foundation, Investible and Yara Growth Ventures, the venture arm of Yara International, a world leading integrated nitrogen fertilisers producer.

The Series A round, which closed in January, also included Twynam, GrainCorp Ventures, Uniseed/UniSuper, Artesian, SVG Ventures and Agnition Ventures, part of New Zealand fertiliser co-operative Ravensdown. The proceeds will be used to progress first-of-a-kind fertiliser hubs in New South Wales and Tasmania, expand field trials, and further develop PlasmaLeap’s core technology. Funding will also support longer-term applications in sustainable fuels and energy systems.

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