Three former SpaceX engineers have switched their attention from making rocket engines to manufacturing steel parts by using AI-driven software and robots. Their immediate goal involves establishing a prototype factory that can automate most of the steel fabrication process for crucial infrastructure components by 2027.

The startup, called 1872, officially launched on July 22 with a ribbon-cutting ceremony at its Factory One facility in Cincinnati, Ohio. The company is initially focused on automating the manufacturing of steel skids—rectangular steel frames that can provide a moveable foundation for modular buildings—with the goal of supplying customers who are developing AI data centers or small modular nuclear reactors.

“We're building towards autonomy, but we're not necessarily building in a dogmatic fashion towards full autonomy,” Dan Summers, CEO of 1872, told Ars. “We may achieve 80 percent autonomous operations, and we may decide that it makes sense to stop there because there's just diminishing returns to go to full 100 percent.”

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For the past year or so, booksellers have suspected that AI firms are buying up huge lots of rare books, then destroying them after scanning them to train AI. But this was hard to prove until now, as 404 Media reports that an Airtag hidden in a rare book shows that at least one tech giant, in the race to advance its frontier models, is behind some of the bulk orders: Amazon.

On Monday, 404 Media revealed that it had connected with a bookseller who agreed to plant an Airtag in a rare book that was part of a bulk order. That Airtag was then tracked to an Amazon AI training facility in Las Vegas that housed a team focused on tearing books from their spines and scanning pages, 404 Media reported. Apparently tone-deaf to the escalating backlash over destructive book scanning, a logo on the door of that team’s warehouse, VGT3, showed a Tyrannosaurus rex preparing to devour a book, 404 Media documented.

Amazon deflects

Amazon declined to comment on 404 Media’s findings, only providing Ars with the same statement it gave to 404 Media, which does not mention AI training specifically.

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