Browsing: Behind

Ask most executives to picture the cost of AI and they’ll likely see GPUs—racks of accelerators with gigawatts of power—and a waitlist for silicon. But that picture leaves something out: Data storage costs.

Welcome to the second space race. You can be forgiven for experiencing déjà vu. Last time, it was the Soviet Union and the United States vying to be the first to plant some flags. Now it’s a sprint to the lunar surface between America and China—alongside a host of varyingly friendly and rival nations—plus a…

I spend much of my time these days in rooms with plant heads, automation leads, system engineers and almost every conversation about “AI-ready manufacturing” starts with machines and ends with people. We talk about sensors, digital twins, predictive models, robotics on the shop floor and then someone asks, “But who’s going to run all this?”