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Welcome to the reading list, a weekly roundup of news and links related to buildings, infrastructure, and industrial technology.
欢迎来到阅读列表，这是与建筑、基础设施和工业技术相关的新闻和链接的每周综述。
This week we look at Icon’s fundraising, employment in China’s solar industry, grid-scale battery reliability, Tesla’s flying roadster, and more.
本周我们将关注 Icon 的融资、中国太阳能行业的就业情况、电网规模的电池可靠性、特斯拉的飞行跑车等等。
Roughly 2/3rds of the reading list is paywalled, so for full access become a paid subscriber.
大约 2/3 的阅读列表是付费的，因此要获得完整的访问权限，请成为付费订阅者。
Housekeeping items this week: I was on MTS Live talking about robots, prefabricated construction, and other things.
本周家政用品：我在 MTS Live 上谈论机器人、预制建筑和其他事情。
From the annals of “ suspicious discontinuities ,” New York City has a tax break for new projects that set aside some proportion of the units as affordable housing called “485-x.” If a project has more than 99 units, the required share of units that are “affordable” goes up, and so do the wages that need to be paid for construction workers, resulting in a very large number of projects that are exactly 99 units.
从“可疑的不连续性”的历史来看，纽约市对新项目实行税收减免，这些新项目将一定比例的单元作为经济适用房，称为“485-x”。如果一个项目的数量超过99个单位，那么“负担得起”的单位比例就会增加，建筑工人的工资也会增加，从而导致大量的项目正好是99个单位。
[ X ] [ Housing Wire ]
[ X ] [ 外壳线 ]
DR Horton, the largest homebuilder in the US, signed an agreement to access the services of Canadian construction automation startup Promise Robotics for more than 1250 homes.
美国最大的住宅建筑商 DR Horton 签署了一项协议，为超过 1250 套住宅使用加拿大建筑自动化初创公司 Promise Robotics 的服务。
Promise seems to offer some sort of AI-driven, robotic factory-based construction service.
Promise 似乎提供某种人工智能驱动的、基于机器人工厂的建筑服务。
“ Promise Robotics applies AI across the homebuilding production process by interpreting existing home designs, generating production plans and robotic instructions, orchestrating manufacturing, and connecting that production with site installation .” [ Promise Robotics ] One possible future I see for construction automation is “AI + robotics changes the logic of prefab construction and makes it more attractive,” so it’ll be interesting to see if things like this play out.
“乔鼎机器人通过解释现有的家居设计、生成生产计划和机器人指令、编排制造并将生产与现场安装连接起来，将人工智能应用于整个住宅建筑生产过程。” [乔鼎机器人]我认为建筑自动化的一个可能的未来是“人工智能+机器人技术改变了预制建筑的逻辑并使其更具吸引力”，所以看看这样的事情是否会发生将会很有趣。
Also in construction automation news, construction 3D printing startup Icon raises a $200 million series D, at a $1.4 billion valuation.
同样在建筑自动化新闻中，建筑 3D 打印初创公司 Icon 筹集了 2 亿美元的 D 轮融资，估值为 14 亿美元。
[ Dealroom ] This is surprising to me: I had sort of assumed things weren’t going well for the company.
[Dealroom] 这让我感到惊讶：我原本以为公司的事情进展不顺利。
Though this does seem to be a “down round” — in 2022 its valuation was supposedly “ approaching $ 2 billion ” — I’m nevertheless adjusting my probabilities of success for Icon upward somewhat.
尽管这似乎确实是一轮“下行融资”——2022 年其估值据称“接近 20 亿美元”——但我还是将 Icon 的成功概率稍微上调了一些。
Some interesting data from Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies on immigrants in the US construction industry.
哈佛大学住房研究联合中心关于美国建筑业移民的一些有趣数据。
One stat I found notable: between 2013 and 2024, the number of foreign-born workers who were construction laborers or carpenters increased massively, even as the number of native-born workers in those occupations declined.
我发现一项值得注意的统计数据：2013 年至 2024 年间，担任建筑工人或木匠的外国出生工人数量大幅增加，而从事这些职业的本土工人数量却在下降。
But for electricians and plumbers (licensed professions), most of the increase came from native-born workers.
但对于电工和水管工（有执照的职业）来说，大部分增长来自本土工人。
[ Harvard JCHS ]
[ 哈佛大学 JCHS ]
GlobalFoundries, the semiconductor manufacturer that was spun off from AMD in 2009, will operate two new fabs planned for New York, funded by $21 billion from Japan.
GlobalFoundries 是一家于 2009 年从 AMD 剥离出来的半导体制造商，计划在纽约运营两座新晶圆厂，日本出资 210 亿美元。
The US government is also taking a 4% equity stake in the company.
美国政府也将持有该公司4%的股权。
[ GlobalFoundries ]
[ 格罗方德 ]
ASML says it can’t currently meet customer demand for lithography machines for 2027 and 2028, and is looking for ways to increase capacity.
ASML表示目前无法满足客户对2027年和2028年光刻机的需求，正在寻找增加产能的方法。
[ ASML ]
[ 阿斯麦 ]
Ruthless competition in China’s solar industry: employment at China’s five biggest solar manufacturers fell 21% last year, and 31% the year before.
中国太阳能行业竞争残酷：中国五家最大太阳能制造商的就业人数去年下降了21%，前年下降了31%。
[ Reuters ]
[路透社]
The US isn’t the only country with a small number of companies that make the grain-oriented electrical steel (GOES) needed for power transformers.
美国并不是唯一拥有少数公司生产电力变压器所需取向电工钢（GOES）的国家。
Only two EU companies, Thyssenkrupp and Stalprodukt, make it, and as in the US they can’t make the highest quality steel.
只有蒂森克虏伯（Thyssenkrupp）和斯塔尔普杜克特（Stalprodukt）两家欧盟公司生产这种钢材，而与美国一样，它们无法生产最高质量的钢材。
“ The global leaders—the companies that make the world’s best GOES—by and large are in [South] Korea and Japan,” Alimento says.
“全球领先者——制造世界上最好的 GOES 的公司——基本上都在韩国和日本，”Alimento 说。
“In the U.S. and in the EU, domestic manufacturers are not capable of making that quality of GOES, because it is a heavily protected trade secret.
“在美国和欧盟，国内制造商无法生产出如此品质的 GOES，因为这是一个受到严格保护的商业秘密。
” [ IEEE Spectrum ]
” [ IEEE 频谱 ]
Thanks to ongoing memory shortages as a result of AI data center construction, smartphone shipments are down 20% year over year.
由于AI数据中心建设导致内存持续短缺，智能手机出货量同比下降20%。
[ Counterpoint ]
[对位]