TWO EXPONENTIALS DRIVING THE NEXT AI WAVE

Two exponentials walk into an advanced manufacturing plant. What happens next?

We're about to find out. Because yesterday Nvidia shipped its Vera Rubin platform - promising up to 10x lower inference costs. And Anthropic bought Vercept, to make its platform even more capable of using computers autonomously.

One announcement makes AI cheaper. The other makes it more able. They’re different forces. And as they collide, they'll multiply again on impact.

The capability curve is steep. According to benchmarks, Claude is already 5x more effective at using computers than it was in late 2024.

We'll soon be at human-level performance - managing multi-step workflows inside live applications. The kind of work that fills the days of quality engineers, production planners and compliance teams in every regulated manufacturing site. Who could be freed up to add more value.

The cost curve is even steeper. Vera Rubin will cut inference costs by up to 10x versus the previous generation - which itself delivered an order-of-magnitude reduction.

So what will happen when these two exponentials walk into a manufacturing plant?

We expect that AI agents will navigate your MES, cross-reference batch records against your CAPA system, pull deviation histories from your QMS and draft the investigation report. All without a human switching between five apps and seven browser tabs. It won't be cost prohibitive either.

But it will be compliant. Anthropic launched its Enterprise Agents programme this week - with pre-built plugins, audit trails and controlled data flows designed specifically for regulated industries.

Of course, its not just advanced manufacturing that will see a whole new range of possibilities. Investors are already repricing what these exponentials mean when they combine.

A single Anthropic blog post about COBOL modernisation wiped $31B off IBM - its worst day in 25 years. The Vercept acquisition sent UiPath down 3.6%. A major software ETF is down 27% year-to-date.

And yesterday, Novo Nordisk committed up to $2.1B to MIT spinout Vivtex, whose AI-driven platform screens thousands of oral drug formulations per day.

Yet OpenAI’s COO Brad Lightcap said last week that AI has ‘not yet really penetrated enterprise business processes.’

And he’s also right. The opportunity in front of many teams is still almost entirely untapped.

Two exponentials. Many opportunities.

At Brightbeam we can help you take control and decide what happens next.