Physical AI companies are about to learn an old infrastructure lesson: A customer contract can be or unlock a form of capital. Gatik just announced a $200 million raise, but the more important numbers are the ones sitting behind the round: more than $600 million in contracted revenue, 85,000 fully driverless orders completed and 99% on-time delivery, all reported by the company. The contract details are not public and neither are recognized revenue, margins or capital required per deployed lane, all of which matter. However, investors across both equity and debt can look at backlog in two buckets (i) high-quality demand or (i) a potentially expensive promise. Nonetheless, I think this is still a useful signal/lesson for Physical AI founders. First, contracts can de-risk demand before a company scales the fleet. A signed route or workflow is more financeable than a general claim that a machine has a large market. Second, operating proof can separate technology capital from asset capital. Equity will fund building out autonomy, safety and the next product. Once the deployed unit is predictable, equipment finance or other lower-cost capital can fund more trucks or robots. Third, contracts force repeatability. A customer buying reliable throughput cares about on-time delivery, interventions, uptime and cost per order. After things are live in the field, your ability to perform is whats up for the test. Lower cost debt capital is a fundamental need for the current Physical AI valuations to fundamentally work longer-term if you are handling hardware. Therefore, being extremely intentional during contracting is critical. The top 5 things that would be on my mind as a Founder are: 1. Duration of contract 2. Cancellation rights 3. Minimum volume 4. Your own deployment capex and payment terms with suppliers 5. Your expected gross profit and what levers you need to believe in for it to be X vs. Y If you can pull forward customer payments to finance the business that's even better. But if you can't, making sure your contracts and ability to back it up are airtight is key.

Reinvention is arguably harder than building from scratch. Today I can finally talk about the massive pivot and rebuild we've been up to at Electric for 2+ years, as well as take the cover off our AI IT platform, our mass distribution channels and more.

The fastest growing companies in robotics are all supporting real customers in the deployment of robotics in a hardware agnostic way. The model appears is focused on 1. Data capture 2. Model training 3. Deployment Not only is the market pull insane, but the cashflow dynamics are 10X stronger

Bet my wife I could lose 12 lbs in 6 wks without meds. • My Penalty for losing: A watch...but losing isn't an option •Her Penalty: Holding a sign in Soho for 2 hrs w/my copy of choice • Progress: 10.2 lbs down • Deadline: 6 days • Remaining: 1.8 lbs Any final stretch advice?

Too many Physical AI founders are obsessed with the technology. The team at Dandy is obsessed with the outcome. Over the last 18 months, Dandy has become a leading Physical AI business that is delivering the highest quality crowns at industry leading prices. And under the hood the technology breakthroughs are insane 1. AI Crown Design - the team built their own model from scratch to drive down the cost of design and improve design accuracy that has led to industry leading remake rates 2. Automated Nesting Technology - Maximizes their yield on CNC milling of crowns 3. Robotics - automates their manufacturing line end to end 4. Proprietary QAQC - checks the quality of the crown at multiple points across the manufacturing process 5. Material Science Breakthroughs - the first company in the world to ever 3D inkjet print at the micron level that is required to deliver the reaction you see in that video 6. Launched their own Proprietary Scanner - Democratizes access to high quality scanners for free for Dentists 7. Chairside AI - Provides real-time feedback to Dental practices to make sure that they hit the scan quality required and coaches them in real-time around the scan, rebooking the patient and more These are just some of the things the Dandy team has accomplished in an insane time period. Yet you don't hear them talking about it. What you see them talking about is customer reactions and love. Why? Because Dentists don't care about how something is made. They care about do they get a great crown at a great price and in record breaking time. And Dandy delivers that.

AI unlocks insane product velocity But so much of it is being wasted. Startups need to spend more time: 1. New sales pitch training - operationalizing how that leads to changes in the sales pitch + training 2. On Acquisition Funnels - the way you’re AB testing marketing funnels to acquire customers 3. Upsell motion - identifying signals in the data to prioritize customers for upsell and getting your teams upsell motion nailed 4. Product marketing - how you’re doing product marketing on a per user basis to drive more engagement and retention And many more

Three years ago, everyone told us this was impossible when @PrimaryVC led the seed round. Today, @Etched is shipping production racks to Jane Street. Life-changing and extraordinary to watch this team turn a contrarian idea into working silicon, real systems, and real customer deployments. Trust me on this one: they’re just getting started.