Philip de la Gueronniere

Founder @ Cortland. AI for refineries, pipelines, and plants. Built (reliability intelligence). Houston.

[Philip de la Gueronniere @Philipdlg]

@DanKulkov What kind of camera?

[Jensen Huang @JensenHuang]

For my first post, I’m sharing a letter @NVIDIA signed on why open models matter.

AI will transform every industry, power every company, and be built by every country.

Open models strengthen safety and cybersecurity, accelerate innovation and diffusion, and enable sovereignty.

The world needs both frontier closed models and frontier open models.

https://t.co/AUKzoQ5Ikb

[Philip de la Gueronniere @Philipdlg]

@PeterJ_Walker How is Houston in the top 10 if they don’t rank in any of the subcategories? What is pulling them to 8th?

[Noah Schochet @noah_schochet]

Today, we’re announcing that we’ve raised $115 million in funding, including a $100M Series A led by @kleinerperkins.

America has lost the ability to build, and we’re here to restore it. My co-founder, @NoahMcGuinn, and I left our jobs at @SpaceX , where we worked on programs including Starship, Starshield, and @Starlink, to build a company that will solve construction’s greatest challenges.

Infrastructure is the foundation of civilization, and construction is the precursor to innovation. If America wants to build a brighter future for the next generation, we have to make it faster, cheaper, and safer to build.

That’s where @TerraFirma_Inc comes in. We’re a new type of company, a robotic construction company that builds the full technology stack needed to deliver an order-of-magnitude improvement in one of the world’s oldest, largest, most important, but least efficient industries.

We are building technology that expands what’s possible in construction on Earth, and then we'll use that same technology to build megastructures and colonies on the Moon and Mars.

We’ve made tremendous progress over the past year, growing the company more than 10x in the last 12 months. We are performing projects across the world. By the end of October 2026, we are on track to operate 3 of the top 3 largest robotic construction fleets in the world, each on a different continent, bringing unprecedented speed, scale, and efficiency to some of the world’s most complex critical infrastructure projects.

This funding will allow us to step on the gas and scale our manufacturing, software, operations, and construction deployments, including work on massive commercial and government contracts.

We’re building the future of construction right here in Austin, Texas, and scaling it globally. If you want to be part of the team changing the world, now and on Mars, join us.

Our Series A was led by Kleiner Perkins, with participation from Bain Capital Ventures, Glade Brook Capital Partners, BANNER VC, Saga Ventures, Trust Ventures, Definition, PEAK6, Magnetar Capital, and Ravelin Capital. Huge thanks to all of our angel investors, friends, and family who have helped and supported us throughout this journey.

Apply here: https://t.co/BmXHSGJQQk

[Collin McLelland 🏴‍☠️ @FracSlap]

I'm looking to hire a couple of software engineers that want to apply AI to critical energy infrastructure.

Stop wasting your life working at a company that's building the next note-taking app or data labeling service and come work on something that's challenging and actually matters.

[Zane Hengsperger @zanehengsperger]

had an older fab shop owner call me this week

he asked, "Where the hell do I hire a software engineer?"

keep in mind this is a legacy 10+ year old shop, never had a software engineer listing up, and been doing things the old way forever

mostly excel and a legacy ERP/crm

his thoughts were along the lines of:
> he understands with AI he can make anything exist but it's not good enough to really work
> he has built scheduling and quoting tools that actually save him time and money
> he has seen direct gains from these simple tools to the point where he wants to invest in someone full time and really scale them out
> was very adamant that nothing on the market is truly customizable for his complex business .. "ive tried everything"

his main concern was how he finds a good one

the future of manufacturing is changing

a lot of bottleneck is caught up in tribal knowledge

a lot of bottleneck is caught up in immense amounts of tedious tasks that can be automated with AI or simple software

those who write code, on top of immense existing capacity, will win

[Philip de la Gueronniere @Philipdlg]

@JakeAsman “George Washington is not a 1A.” -Benedict Harmon

[Philip de la Gueronniere @Philipdlg]

@pierreeliottlal GTM

[Bill Gurley @bgurley]

When I came back to Austin after almost 30 years, one of the first people to reach out and welcome me back was Josh. No one tilted harder as an enthusiastic supporter of Austin entrepreneurism. Will be greatly missed.

[YIMBYLAND @YIMBYLAND]

This is so heartbreaking. Joshua was one of the OGs in the Austin startup scene. Basically put it on the map with Capital Factory. We owe so much to him.

Rest in peace, Josh. We’ll keep the dreams of builders alive in Austin. 🙏

[Philip de la Gueronniere @Philipdlg]

@FreddyLA7 Welcome to Houston! When is the meet and greet?

[@jason @Jason]

.@NBAOfficial — explain this

[Philip de la Gueronniere @Philipdlg]

@FracSlap At least it has windows

[Philip de la Gueronniere @Philipdlg]

@jonbriggamsback @levie I'd love to, Alberta I am guessing?

[Philip de la Gueronniere @Philipdlg]

Yes, cultural resistance to technology is prevalent in the energy industry. Two sides: the actual operations people are focused on operations and safety. The other side is the business, they are more open. One caveat is that engineers are logical people and if they can be shown why something is better, they will adopt.

[Philip de la Gueronniere @Philipdlg]

@rirving @linear Have you used as MCP with Claude? Changed our entire company.

[Bearly AI @bearlyai]

McKinsey is “under pressure from clients” to change its business model due to AI.

Instead of tying fees to hours worked —AI can do analysis, diagnosis and reports in minutes — clients want “to tie its fees to outcomes achieved” (eg. lower costs, higher revenues, increased market share).

One consulting examples is Rolls-Royce: since 2018, the engine maker charges does a “power-by-the-hour” programme, which charges *fixed* fee for every hour an engine is in the air (fee covers maintenance, repairs and replacements costs).

Many SaaS firms have also pivoted to outcomes based. Fin’s AI chatbot charges $1 per customer case resolved. iDenfy bills £1 per ID verification. Salesforce now lets users pay per task.

[Philip de la Gueronniere @Philipdlg]

@brackin Just have Claude break down your plan and create tickets in linear. You can have them assigned to you or to Claude. This works well on Claude desktop and dispatch.