Hyperscaling Atoms
For 200 years humans climbed a wave of atoms then electrons then bits. Each step was necessary to made the next possible. We have just reached the crest of the wave with AI.
Now the wave must reverse. Bits must hyperscale the electrons need to power itself. That power will also be used to hyperscale atoms all powered by AI.
This is the most important industrial transition of the next 10,000 years is happening now.
The first wave took 200 years.
- Atoms via industrialization: Coal, iron, concrete, black skies and lungs. Wrip the slow moving agriculture out and pull them into machinery and assembly lines. We hyperscaled atoms over the 150 years of the industrial revolution.
- Unlocked Electrons. The edison tesla rows culminating in The Pearl Street Substation. The interstate transmission system in the postwar decades. Electrification enabled the 20th century and it took 80 years to spread everywhere.
- Now Bits. Transistors become the internet and cloud compute. Hyperscaling as a concept emerges, And then we see that scaling is all you need in the frontier models. It took 30 years from www to GPT-4.
Each builds on itself to make the next possible and we have hit the crest of the wave with AI
Reversing the wave
Atoms → Electrons → Bits
AI….
Bits → Electrons → Atoms.
In the short, medium and long term AI is bottlenecked by energy.
A GPU is an expensive way to convert energy into intelligence.
If we continue how we have done it to date we will fail. For 100 years energy has been built roughly the same, but ever slower and with a fucking terrifying acceptance of medocrity. 100-person teams grinding through every project from scratch, in every county, in each utility. Energy developers must navigate 28,000+ permitting jurisdictions, 3,000 utilities, 50 state regulators, federal tax rules, landowners with their own incentives, and ever more skeptical communities with veto power. Every project is bespoke.
But the same models enabled at the top of the wave can unlock a hyperscaling energy. Agents+robotics mean we can collapse energy development and hyperscale it.
Solar is hyperscaling. Whatever comes next (better storage, advanced geothermal, eventually fusion) must ride on the same curve: more energy, cheaper, every year. That is the input that makes everything else possible.
AI gifts us hyperscaling atoms
We are using AI to hyperscale electrons because AI needs electrons, but that has the amazing impact of giving us cheap, ubiquitous energy. Which powered a civilization that can hyperscale atoms. Every factory, fab, port, mine, desalination plant, vertical farm, robot, and launch facility runs on electrons. When electrons go from scarce to abundant, every physical thing gets cheap as a side effect. You do not have to organize the atom hyperscaling, we get it for free because energy as an input cost collapses.
THIS IS THE LARGEST POSITIVE EXTERNALITY IN HUMAN HISTORY. AI guided by humans enables the scaling of electrons, and we will hyperscale the entire physical substrate of civilization on the way.
We are living this right now.
Paces is the orchestration layer for electrons. The Paces Agent moves projects from siting to permitting to grid connection and soon to . We are unlocking a world where a single developer can moves +500 MWs of power projects per year. This means one person has a $1B company. When I wrote my view on this 6 months ago, I thought it would take until 2030. We have moved so much faster and we have customers doing this today.
What did you think hyperscaling meant? vibes? papers? essays? losers…
I am building Paces because we are at a fork; either we use AI to hyperscale electrons, which gives us the energy to hyperscale atoms and the species builds outward past our planet and system and galaxy. Or we point AI inward and use it to just hyperscale bits in a closed loop: better chatbots, better feeds, better generated content, more immersive VR.
That second path is a Brave New Meta World. The only risk of AGI is that it is used to build entertainment rather than kardashev machines.
We could fuck this up; too much of the capital being deployed right now is going toward the inward path — better feeds, better content, better simulated reality. The hard work of pointing AI at electrons is less sexy and harder. Permitting agents. Interconnection automation. Phone calls to the county.
Honestly, this is the work we must do and why Paces is the most important organisation that exists. The wave only reverses if a critical mass of capital and talent points itself at unlocking electrons and atoms. Do you want your kids mainlining cocomelon or do we want to spread through the stars?
Atoms → Electrons → Bits
AI….
Bits → Electrons → Atoms.
