Thoughts on AI in chemical distribution: what's working, what to skip, and how operators are putting it to use.
Anthropic's newest model went offline worldwide for 6 days, then returned paid. The lesson on building so you can swap models.
ChatGPT slipped below 50% of the AI assistant market. For a distributor, the tool choice now comes down to the job and the data policy.
ERP agents now create journal entries, post receipts, and process invoices inside the system, with an approval step and an audit trail.
MIT found 95% of corporate AI pilots show no profit impact, and RAND puts the failure rate near 80%. I've seen the same pattern in distribution, pick one workflow buried in paperwork, keep a human checking every output, and measure it for 90 days before spending more.
Visa plugged its payment network into ChatGPT so an agent can shop and buy at almost any merchant that takes Visa, but built in spending limits and a human approval step before the money moves. I work with distributors eyeing full autonomy for reordering and purchasing, and Visa's choice to keep a human in the loop is the lesson.
Anthropic, OpenAI, and SpaceX have all filed for IPOs, putting the combined AI IPO pipeline at $3.6 trillion, with Anthropic's revenue run rate hitting $47 billion in May. The valuations prove the technology has staying power, so put AI on your strategic plan this year with an owner and a budget line.
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.
A quick note from ACD Connection SR 2026 on the value of reconnecting with friends, colleagues, and clients face to face.
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.
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.
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.
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.
