Most AI-coding takes stay in the browser tab; this one drags the same one-shot generation loop into physical hardware, using models to draft schematics and collapse PCB timelines from months to weeks. Worth a watch if you build anything with silicon and want to see what it looks like when 'iterate like software' actually reaches the manufacturing floor — including what still needs a human in the loop.
Key takeaways · AI-distilled
Davide Asnaghi, formerly of Apple's Special Projects Group, co-founded Brooklyn-based Diode to use AI to design and manufacture circuit boards in the United States; two years in, its customers include Physical Intelligence and Saronic.
Diode partners with Anthropic to make Claude a better electrical engineer, and its models can one-shot much of schematic design, compressing hardware timelines from months to weeks.
A three-week pivot during Y Combinator transformed Diode from a design-validation tool into a full-stack circuit-board manufacturer.
Asnaghi calls circuit boards the "forgotten middle child" between silicon and software — the West outsourced PCB manufacturing to Asia in the 2000s, and he argues bringing it back matters for American competitiveness.
Asnaghi's conviction came from time in Hong Kong and Shenzhen studying Asia's electronics manufacturing ecosystem, which he believes has a manufacturing culture Silicon Valley can learn from; Diode's stated ambition is to make hardware as nimble as software.
