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The a16z Show

Designing the Physical World with AI

The a16z Show

a16z

Science, Entrepreneurship, Culture, Business, Innovation, Technology, Disruption, Software Eating The World

4.21.2K Ratings

🗓️ 11 June 2026

⏱️ 50 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Erin Price-Wright speaks with Alex Modon, cofounder and CEO at Unlimited Industries, and Davide Asnaghi, CEO at Diode Computers, about how AI is moving from software into the physical world. They discuss automating construction and electronics design, using code and simulation to model real-world systems, and how incentives and manufacturing constraints shape adoption. They also examine what it takes to scale infrastructure, reduce build times, and unlock more abundant industrial capacity in the United States.

Transcript

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0:00.0

I want to be able to spin up a hardware company the same way that my friends spin up B2B SaaS.

0:06.0

Like, you should be able to say, I want to do something that's considered very hard and just go and do it.

0:11.0

We basically built a compiler that gives the model enough hints that it feels like it's writing a Python program instead of designing a circuit board.

0:20.0

It's basically this combination of a very model-led approach that allows you to use these agents

0:25.1

to write code, which is what they know how to do. Put on Rails.

0:28.5

Everything is code. The last frontier standing is we don't have enough data. The data is

0:33.6

the thing that we need to generate it as a society if we want circuit boards to be automated by AI.

0:38.8

Making sure that you design the system to actually be fully autonomous and to not be human in the loop.

0:43.7

I think for us at least, it feels like it's driven a very different architecture.

0:48.5

What happens when intelligence gets cheap, but the physical world stays slow?

0:53.7

In the 20th century, industrial power came from the ability to design and build at scale.

0:59.0

From assembly lines to semiconductor fabs, progress meant compressing time between idea and output.

1:05.0

Software accelerated that loop to near zero, but in construction and manufacturing, timelines still stretch

1:11.9

into years, shaped by fragmented workflows, fixed incentives, and systems that resist change.

1:19.2

Now that's starting to shift.

1:21.0

AI can write code, run simulations, and generate designs across thousands of permutations.

1:27.3

The question is whether that translates into faster builds or just better plans.

1:32.2

I want to understand what it takes to actually move atoms, not just bits.

1:37.4

A16Z general partner Aaron Price-Rite speaks with Alex Modin,

1:41.7

co-founder and CEO at Unlimited Industries, and Davide Asnagi, CEO at Diode Computers.

1:51.0

We're thrilled to be here today with Davidei Asnagi and Alex Modin. Davide is the CEO of diode computers,

1:58.3

and they're using AI to design and manufacture custom circuit boards

...

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