Unbelievable — it has been one year since September 2, 2025, when I published the very first Physical AI Newsletter with title: Physical AI: Reimagine Manufacturing as America’s Biggest Opportunity

No real plan for a "publication." Just a founder, an investor's notebook, and a hunch that if I wrote down what I was seeing — funding rounds, supply chain shifts, policy changes, the signal buried in the noise — other people building and investing in this space would find it useful too.

A year later, I can say honestly: this has been one of the best learning journeys of me. Writing forces clarity. Publishing forces accountability. And showing up every week meant I had to actually understand what I was writing about, not just skim headlines.

It all traces back to August 7, 2025, when I hosted the very first Physical AI Meetup in Silicon Valley. I still remember walking out of that room energized — not because the turnout was huge, but because of the quality of the conversations. Founders building humanoid robots, engineers working on autonomy stacks, investors trying to figure out where the next decade of hardware capital was going to flow — all in one room, all hungry for the same thing: a place to make sense of what was happening in physical AI before it had a name everyone agreed on.

So I sat down and wrote the first issue of what would become the Physical AI Signal Newsletter now on Linkedin. 50builders.ai, and https://x.com/davidcao01/articles.

So I sat down and wrote the first issue of what would become the Physical AI Signal Report.

A year later, I can say honestly: this has been one of the best learning journeys of my own career. Writing forces clarity. Publishing forces accountability. And showing up every week meant I had to actually understand what I was writing about, not just skim headlines.

Thaks a lot for reading this. Your feedback and suggestion are going to help me to go further.

Here's what that year looked like.

None of these numbers were the goal when I started. But they tell me something I didn't expect a year ago: this became infrastructure for a Physical AI community, not just a personal writing habit.

If you want to know what this community actually cares about, the data tells a clear story:

#1 — 6 Space Data Center Startups Raised $1B to compete with SpaceX, Google, Blue Origin: the $Trillion Bet 58K impressions · 248 engagements

#2 — The eVTOL Race: Joby & Archer's Buying Spree — Boeing Enters the Arena 37K impressions

#3 — Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin Joins SpaceX & Firefly: Austin Is Now a Global Space Tech Capital 25K impressions

The numbers only tell half the story. What's actually changed my year is the direct reach-out. Founders DM me after an issue goes out, asking for feedback on their raise. Investors ask for an intro after reading about a company I covered. . This newsletter stopped being a broadcast a long time ago — it became a two-way channel, and honestly, the most valuable part of doing this work.

1 The Community

That same energy is what built Physical AI Builders into a fast-growing community in its own right — now 20,000 members strong, with 30,000 meetup RSVPs across four cities. And it's not just community metrics. Physical AI itself is far more widely adopted than it was a year ago — what used to be a niche thesis is now a mainstream rotation for Silicon Valley capital and corporate strategy alike.

2 The Physical AI Podcast

To keep up with that shift, we also stood up an advisory committee and launched The Physical AI Podcast this year — both born out of the same instinct that started the newsletter: get smarter people than me in the room, and share what we learn.

Year two is about going deeper. More original research. More long-form reports, not just weekly signal. Fewer surface-level roundups, more of the kind of deep dives that made the space data center story resonate the way it did.

But I don't want to guess what to cover next — I'd rather ask.

What's the one physical AI story, sector, or signal you think deserves a deep dive in year two? Reply and tell me — your suggestion might be the next cover story.