Bricks And Bytes Executive Briefing: Construction Is Spending Billions on the Wrong Problem
19 snips
Mar 14, 2026 Fifty AEC leaders all betting on AI but copying the same broken processes. Why “don’t automate the past” is the rallying cry and the Rule of Five could change how teams test AI. Big money is flowing into data centres and industrial work while housing stalls. A billion-dollar push toward world models that understand physics and what that could mean for construction.
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Information Costs Are Approaching Zero
- The cost to process information is collapsing, making information friction less important than organizational design.
- Stanford data shows GPT-3.5 inference costs fell ~280x between Nov 2022 and end of 2024, pushing focus to value-chain design.
Caterra's Ambitious Failure
- Caterra attempted full vertical integration with $2B raised and failed despite right ambition.
- The lesson: physical vertical integration was capital intensive, but digital 'virtual' integration might now be feasible with AI.
Construction Has No Rallying Moonshot
- Construction lacks a compelling moonshot to unite data sharing and collaboration at scale.
- Productivity is important but doesn't inspire firms to share data the way a health moonshot (cure disease) does.