This shift carries genuine risks. The same tools that can detect wildfires or prevent

job site accidents could actually enable dystopian nightmares as well.

The way that software will affect the physical world is through these sort of embodied, electrified

components. We're seeing founders try to reduce these problems into kind of a decomposable set of modular parts such that you can apply the principles of an assembly line to society-scale problems.

The problem of messy data is not a new one, and it's at the heart of this broader movement.

The winners in this next wave will be those that really earn public trust, building privacy-preserving, interoperable AI-native systems that make society both more legible without making it less free.

What will define the next year of building?

Our 2026 ideas reflect the themes our investing teams believe will shape how technology evolves next.

This episode is built around four big ideas about AI leaving the screen and entering the physical economy.

When AI moves it to factories, construction sites, supply chains, and critical infrastructure, the rules change.

Reliability matters, real-world constraints show up fast, and the advantage shifts from teams that can build systems, not just software.

You're going to hear three perspectives on what enables that shift.

A factory first mindset, an electro-industrial stack, physical observability, and the industrial data frontier.

To start, we need the operating model.

Aaron Price-Wright argues that we're entering a renaissance of the American factory,

not just as a building, but as a set of principles.

The idea is to apply assembly line logic to problems like energy, mining, construction, and manufacturing,

using modularity, autonomy, and skilled labor to turn complex work into repeatable systems.

Here's Aaron.

My big idea for 2026 is the renaissance of the American factory. I think next year we'll see companies approach challenges from energy to mining, to construction, to manufacturing

with a factory first mindset.

The modular deployment of AI and autonomy alongside skilled labor will make complex,

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