Hardware and energy get cheaper and more automated
CircuitHub's founder showed up to talk about The Grid, a factory-scale robot in Massachusetts that builds PCBs on demand, noting that hardware design is going through the same AI revolution as coding. Formlabs preorders for a $699 Studio 1 resin printer hit the front page, and commenters credited Chinese competition for the price. A monastery group is using CNC to carve gothic stone designs. The US also added a record 20.2 GWh of battery storage in three months.
The pattern: physical production is following software's cost curve. Prototype-to-product loops are shrinking through on-demand PCBs, sub-$700 printers, and cheap batteries. Commenters keep asking practical questions, like whether CircuitHub can do UL certification, which shows where the gap is.
A sober note from the battery thread: 20.2 GWh is a bit over two minutes of average US demand, so it is a record without being large yet.
So what?
If you have been put off by hardware startup costs, the prototyping side is getting cheaper fast. The leftover friction is certification, compliance, and logistics, and those are where tooling and services businesses will earn money. Cheaper batteries also help anyone building energy-hungry products like AI infrastructure.
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The US added a record 20.2 GWh of battery storage in just 3 months