Notes from inside the industry.
Thoughts on AI in chemical distribution: what's working, what to skip, and how operators are putting it to use.
Latest posts.
- June 13, 2026
I’ve been using Fable all week and it is awesome. Used my tokens incredibly fast (2x rate of Opus).
I used Fable all week and burned through tokens at twice the rate of Opus. This morning the model was unavailable after the Trump administration banned foreign access to Anthropic's new models, which I call brilliant marketing.
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AI in Chemicals - June 11, 2026
This week, a survey of 250+ chemical companies shows the industry is already finding value in AI where it matters to formulators, Apple opened the iPhone to outside AI models including Claude, and state AI regulation (Colorado's AI Act, effective June 30) is arriving well ahead of any federal law.
Newsletter→ - June 12, 2026
Yes, yes, yes! Time goes on and waits for no one.
Fear of failure holds a lot of us back, and failure can be recovered from. Regret sticks, and the only way out of it is to do the thing. Take the leap on the trip, business or career that lights you up.
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June 11, 2026There's real value in being in the room where it happens.
A quick note from ACD Connection SR 2026 on the value of reconnecting with friends, colleagues, and clients face to face.
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June 10, 2026AI In Chemicals - June 11, 2026
This week, Microsoft raises Copilot prices July 1 and adds Agent Mode to Excel, ChatGPT's new memory feature raises a data security question for reps who type customer or pricing details into it, SAP is rolling AI agents into ERP execution, and Anthropic's newest Claude model reads tables buried inside PDFs.
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June 2, 2026The ACD Spring Regional Meeting starts Monday in Cleveland. This year I used the Claude Chrome plug-in to prepare differently.
Ahead of the ACD Spring Regional Meeting in Cleveland, I used the Claude Chrome plug-in to pull the attendee list out of the event app and match it against my HubSpot contacts in about three minutes. It surfaced who I already knew, our last conversation, and open deals, plus who I still need to research.
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June 1, 2026Selling Caustic Soda? Are your reps still doing the conversion in their head? Times are changing and here's why.
Caustic soda actives have crept higher as manufacturers improve yields, so a wet pound and a dry ton no longer mean what they used to, and reps doing that conversion in their head give away margin. I built a caustic converter that does the math so the quoted price still reflects the actives underneath.
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May 29, 2026Microsoft built its whole AI bet on ChatGPT. Now it is quietly leaning on Claude.
Microsoft built its whole Copilot bet on OpenAI, then quietly shipped Copilot Cowork on Anthropic's Claude after putting $15 billion into the company last fall. Models are becoming a commodity, the real value sits in your data, and the distributors with clean pricing and customer data will be ready when the agents show up.
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May 26, 2026Most companies I talk to have signed up for Claude, but their teams are not using it.
Most companies with a Claude license never train their people on it, so the tool sits unused. I offer training and hands-on workshops built on chemical data so teams get a return from day one.
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May 25, 2026Anthropic went from $1B annual run rate to $30B in 15 months. OpenAI is at $24B.
Anthropic's annual run rate went from $1B to $30B in 15 months, and eight of the Fortune 10 are now Claude customers, even though most operators still picture ChatGPT when they think "AI." Brand recognition is a lousy proxy for which model is actually built for your work.
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May 23, 2026Anthropic just signed a 300 MW compute deal with SpaceX. The bottleneck in AI moved from model quality to electricity.
Anthropic signed a 300 MW compute deal with SpaceX for power from its Colossus 1 data center in Memphis, enough for roughly 250,000 homes. The AI race has shifted from who has the smartest model to who can plug in, and that changes what to watch when picking a vendor.
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May 23, 2026I counted 60 AI tools in one infographic this week. Most companies will try a few and go nowhere.
A friend sent me a chart of 60 AI tools across 12 categories, and most companies I work with are piloting a few without ever getting one fully working. My advice is to pick one tool, tie it to one costly workflow, and give it 90 days before adding more.
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