Most people describe the AI buildout in the language of software. Guilherme Gerdau Johannpeter describes it in the language of the physical economy.
He is Vice-Chairman of Gerdau, the largest long steel producer in the Americas, the largest scrap recycler in Latin America, and one of the lowest-carbon steelmakers in the world, a company with 124 years of history. He has spent 40 years with the company his family has led for generations, rising through its commercial and operating ranks, running the long steel business in North America, and leading the global special steel division before taking his seat on the Board. Few people have watched the industry move through this many cycles, and few speak about the current one with more conviction.
His read on the moment is direct. The reindustrialization of the United States is real. Manufacturing is coming back. More than $700 billion of capital is going into the infrastructure that AI requires: data centers, transmission lines, solar, renewables. All of it material intensive. The buildout everyone describes in software terms cannot happen without the physical world underneath it.
What stood out was where Gerdau is pointing that same technology. The company is now simulating demand, chemistry, production, and scheduling in ways that were not possible before. The producer supplying the materials for the AI economy is using AI to run its own operations.
Supply the buildout. Apply the tools. Compound the advantage.
The AI economy is being written in software and built in the physical world. We're glad to be building alongside the people, like Guilherme Johannpeter and Andre Johannpeter who understand both.
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