Compute Notes · Building and investing in AI infrastructure

Watt — the financial control layer for AI spend. Every AI request runs through Watt, so finance can finally see where every dollar went, what was wasted, and how it belongs in the P&L. OpenAI-compatible — one base-URL change, nothing to rip out.

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AI Infrastructure
Robotics
Drones
Space
Spatial Computing
GPUs
Data centers
Tokens
Agent economy
Frontier capital
AI Infrastructure
Robotics
Drones
Space
Spatial Computing
GPUs
Data centers
Tokens
Agent economy
Frontier capital

Ventures. One flagship software company, plus Physical AI hardware that puts the thesis in people's hands.

Flagship venture · digital

Watt The financial control layer for AI spend.

AI is now one of the fastest-growing cost lines in a company, and the least accountable one. Watt sits in the path of every model call, so it sees what no invoice can: which team, product and customer each dollar served, what was wasted, and what the same work would have cost on the frontier model. Finance gets attribution, unit economics and savings it can audit — in one board-ready report.

Status: building · dogfooded on my own agent stack

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Physical AI · prototype

NODE P01

A courier-robot prototype: perception, control and the unit economics of an autonomous machine, validated in simulation before hardware is committed. It exists to teach us the physical layer from the inside.

Status: prototype · in development

NODE P01 courier-robot prototype carrying a coffee and a bag up stone steps — Concept render

Physical AI · product

Compute Notes Relay CN-R1

A physical control surface for AI coding agents. Hold to talk; one press to approve, reject or send — four mechanical keys in a machined body, so a decision doesn't cost you a window switch.

Status: shipping now · A$129 founder price

Buy CN-R1

Compute Notes Relay CN-R1 — four-key black keypad engraved Compute Notes Relay

The financial control layer for AI spend

Cut your AI bill — and prove every dollar.

Watt turns raw model usage into a financial picture finance can stand behind: where every dollar went, whether it was spent efficiently, and how it belongs in your P&L. Every saving is logged against what the frontier model would have cost, so it can be audited.

Get a free AI-spend teardown

Send a usage export or point Watt at your provider. You get back where the money went, what looks wasteful, and a board-ready one-pager.

Watt

The AI bill arrives as one number. Finance can't explain it. It isn't attributed to a team, product or customer. There are no unit economics and no efficiency signal — so when the board asks why AI cost tripled and what it bought, nobody has an answer.

Get a free AI-spend teardown Contact us

For the engineer who installs it: one base-URL change. Point your agents at Watt instead of a model provider — Claude Code, LangGraph, anything OpenAI-compatible. Same interface, nothing to rip out. Finance gets the ledger; engineering keeps its stack.

78%of finance leaders can't fully tie AI spend to business outcomes
66%say their board now conditions more AI funding on proof of return
87%say they need to tie AI spend to results within the next year

Source: CloudZero, “Finding the ROI of AI: The Finance Perspective”, survey of 260 senior finance leaders, June 2026.

Attribute. Every call tagged to team, product, feature and customer — then turned into cost per user, per workflow, per dollar of revenue.

Compress. Strip the redundant context agents re-send every turn before the call is ever priced.

Route. Routine work to a cheaper capable model; the frontier model for genuinely hard steps. Anything ambiguous goes to the frontier.

Prove. Every call logged against its frontier-model cost, so each dollar saved has an audit trail — and a quality floor you control.

Design partners — now onboarding.

A free AI-spend teardown of your current bill before anything changes.
Integration is one base-URL change — minutes, not a project.
You set the quality floor; output is never silently degraded.
We keep a share of savings only when we can verify them. No savings, no fee.

Best fit: an AI bill growing faster than anyone can explain it.

Store. The hardware we build and the book behind the thesis — shipping to Australia and China.

Visit the store

Hardware · CN-R1 · shipping now
Compute Notes Relay
Working with a coding agent is a loop: speak, read, approve, reject, send. Relay puts that loop under your thumb — push-to-talk plus approve, reject and send as physical keys.
Founder price
A$129
Microphone shown for demonstration, not included.
Buy Relay
Book · English & 中文
The Intelligent Economy
How infrastructure, AI and capital are building the next era of abundance — the thesis behind Compute Notes, in long form. By Carol Chen.
Print
A$150
Digital (EPUB)
A$100
《智能经济》中文版 also available · digital editions delivered instantly by email.
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ResearchWriting in public as I build — the same lens, pointed at the market.

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What GPU contracts borrow from oil & gas finance — and where the analogy breaks.
Jun 4, 2026 · 3 min read
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“If token is the new electricity, someone has to install the meter and run the grid efficiently.”

Carol, Builder + Investor, Compute Notes

Watt
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CN-R1
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About

I come from M&A and financial due diligence — years spent taking businesses apart to see how the economics really work. Every major industry eventually grows a financial-infrastructure layer. AI is hitting that stage now, and that's the layer I'm building and backing.

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Builder of Watt, the financial control layer for AI spend, and Compute Notes hardware.

Investor across AI infrastructure, robotics, drones, space and spatial computing.

Writer of Compute Notes and Founder Intelligence.

Watt — the financial control layer for AI spend. Every AI request runs through Watt, so finance can finally see where every dollar went, what was wasted, and how it belongs in the P&L. OpenAI-compatible — one base-URL change, nothing to rip out.

Watt — the financial control layer for AI spend. Every AI request runs through Watt, so finance can finally see where every dollar went, what was wasted, and how it belongs in the P&L. OpenAI-compatible — one base-URL change, nothing to rip out.

Ventures. One flagship software company, plus Physical AI hardware that puts the thesis in people's hands.

Watt The financial control layer for AI spend.

NODE P01

Compute Notes Relay CN-R1

Cut your AI bill — and prove every dollar.

The AI bill arrives as one number. Finance can't explain it. It isn't attributed to a team, product or customer. There are no unit economics and no efficiency signal — so when the board asks why AI cost tripled and what it bought, nobody has an answer.

Design partners — now onboarding.

Store. The hardware we build and the book behind the thesis — shipping to Australia and China.

Compute Notes Relay

The Intelligent Economy

ResearchWriting in public as I build — the same lens, pointed at the market.

Get Compute Notes.

Investment themes

Meet the people building the infrastructure of the intelligent economy.

About