Spencer Saldana

The models work. Now what.

I'm Spencer. I work on everything else. The integration, the ownership, the operating model that decides whether AI actually gets used. This site hosts some projects, writing, and assorted reference materials that I tend to come back to.

Writing

everything

The Science of Making Tokens

hover a step to explore.
deep dive available for each.

Five real unit operations between a quartz mine and the next word a model gives you.

step 01Siemens process
read the breakdown

Turning quartz sand into the purest commodity humanity produces.

Energy intensity
~110 kWh per kg of poly-Si
Output purity
99.9999999% (9N)
Global output
~600 kt / year
Electronics share
~10% (rest goes to solar)

A roughly 200x value-add by mass: quartz sand at $0.10/kg becomes polysilicon at $20-30/kg.

Polysilicon producersWacker · GCL · Hemlock · OCI · Tongwei

Projects

all projects

this site, but conversational

Ask it anything. It knows me.

The little pill in the corner is an AI that knows my background, my writing, and my calendar. Cold email is dead. Ask the website.