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.
- July 9, 2026
Most failed AI pilots I see share one root cause: nobody changed the process before adding the agent.
Why agent pilots fail: teams skip the baseline, time, error rate, human effort, before automating a process that was never redesigned for it.
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July 8, 2026A pharmacy filled a prescription in 30 seconds without a pharmacist. Is chemical distribution next?
A startup's automated kiosk fills prescriptions in 30 seconds with no pharmacist on site, and the rules haven't caught up to the technology yet. Chemical distribution, one of the most regulated industries around, should expect that same gap.
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July 7, 2026How much should a distributor bet on any single AI vendor for the next three years?
ChatGPT's chatbot market share fell from 76.5% to 53.9% in 15 months while Gemini's nearly quintupled and it reinforces my AI Orchestra approach to AI Tools.
→ - July 7, 2026
Your analysts can build AI agents now. They do not need IT to do it.
Alteryx's new Agent Studio lets an analyst turn their own workflow into an AI agent without IT, and it backs up exactly what I have been saying: we sell chemicals, but we manage data.
→ - July 6, 2026
An AI just found a security hole that hid in common software for almost 30 years. Every human who audited that code missed it. The machine flagged it almost immediately.
An AI model caught a 30-year-old security flaw in widely used software that generations of human reviewers missed. For distributors running old, untouched ERP systems, that is both a chance to find hidden risk and a warning that attackers have the same tool.
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July 2, 2026Thinking about selling your company? 95% of PE funds say AI met or beat the business case. Only 7% of portfolio companies run AI at scale.
95% of PE funds say AI already met or beat the business case, yet only 7% of portfolio companies run it at scale. Buyers are pricing that gap into the multiple, and training the team early is what closes it.
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July 1, 2026I'm a worse speller because I use AI.
A study found the most confident AI users misjudge their own results the most, and I see the same pattern on sales teams after one good output. The skill worth building now is judgment, what to feed the tool, what to delegate, and how to catch a wrong answer.
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June 30, 2026We're growing! I have a team of 17 and they all work for free.
I built a 17-agent virtual team inside Claude, from a research analyst to a virtual CEO, to run Real Data Solutions day to day. Running a one-person company entirely on AI raises the bar before I need real employees.
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June 23, 2026A Top AI Model Went Dark for 6 Days
Anthropic's newest model went offline worldwide for 6 days, then returned paid. The lesson on building so you can swap models.
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June 23, 2026The Easy AI Tool Decision Just Changed
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.
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June 23, 2026Your ERP Just Learned to Cut the Purchase Order Itself
ERP agents now create journal entries, post receipts, and process invoices inside the system, with an approval step and an audit trail.
→ - June 22, 2026
Slow industries reward their early movers. Overall, chemical distribution is moving slow on AI with some moving faster than others.
AI got no session at the ACD Spring Regional Meeting in Cleveland and barely came up. Careful adoption makes sense here, and the distributors who apply AI to one process this year will spend less and learn faster than those who start in 2027.
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