Connor Love
On a16z Podcast
“It's not one silver bullet that all of a sudden makes a factory or a mine perfect. It's actually 15 or 20 different things… AI will be a phenomenal tool that can be used in the physical world. The reality is, AI cannot turn a wrench yet. It will at some point, but we're far off that.”
a16z Podcast · Startups & Venture · October 2026
Context
The hosts were discussing startups that own a mine or factory outright and rebuild every step with software. Connor argues AI in the physical world works differently from AI in customer service or web products, and needs a deep understanding of the physical process.
Transcript
…you can kind of just see it and it's very easily transferable and kind of understanding it. You know, what Marion is doing with this copper mine is really impressive in a lot of ways. It's not just saying, hey, we're going to be better at extracting copper. It's rethinking everything. The entire
end-to-end process of how you plan, operate, mine, and refine materials. And, you know, what's cool is once you own that process end-to-end and are using software at every stage of that journey, you actually capture that data and then it feeds back. And
this is an important point. I mean, this is not just Mariana, but if you look at another business like Hadrian, I mean, this is a perfect example of how, one, you can utilize software, you know, but more importantly, it's not one silver bullet that all of a sudden makes a factory or a mine perfect. It's actually 15 or 20 different things. And when you look at what Chris has done at Hadrian, you know, yes, it's kind of upfront what it takes to like quote and even take an order of a part. It's, you know, it is the actual physical making of the part. It's how you inspect it and transfer it. And, you know, there's, there's all these different interim steps that exist within a factory. And the beautiful thing when you kind of either…
Well, maybe like a specific example to talk through is like low mix, high volume versus high mix, low volume, and how AI can kind of change the game there. So historically, if you're spending a lot and setting up a line with a lot of automation, you really need to be producing a lot of one single…
And why that's important is, you know, when you look back at how we've articulated AD50 this year, you know, it's kind of three categories. And a lot of times what we focus on, at least, you know, I have and many people in the sector are focused on is just the systems companies. And look, there's a…
you're designing for, you're designing for manufacturer on the outset.
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