What we made
Two Ohm's Cafes in one week. Nº 2 in Astana on July 24, then the first Almaty edition on July 26, hosted together with MOST Hub. That brings the running total to three cafes, two cities, and around fifty builders in the room so far.
Both evenings were built around the same question: what is Physical AI, actually? Everyone's saying it this year — ask what it means and it gets quiet. Our working definition: AI that senses the world, decides, and acts back on it, in a loop. The loop is the point, not the robot.
The format is a talk, a live demo, and an argument. The talk walks from the definition to the honest economics — a working prototype is $30–50 and a week of evenings; the product behind it is certification, field hardening, and fleets. In Almaty we also ran the demo live: describe a part, watch Claude and Fusion 360 model it. Modeled today, printed tomorrow, sensing by the weekend.
The evidence was on the table, not on the slides. icansmell, the electronic nose that won the Cursor Physical AI Hackathon this month, got passed around while its sensors were still warming up. GEMS, a gas emissions monitoring system for oil & gas perimeters, showed the same loop pointed at a hostile world — no outlets on a fence line, −40 °C winters, sites that have gas but not LTE.
Then the argument. Three questions stay on the screen: where would you start today? Should Kazakhstan build physical AI or buy it? And where's the first real money — oil & gas, mining, agriculture, defense, medtech? The slide says what it means: this slide stays up. Argue.
What broke
The honest ratio from the talk applies to the cafes themselves: most of the work is plumbing. Two cities in one week means two rooms, two setups, and one deck that had to flex — Astana got the talk and the argument, Almaty got the live demo because the partnership with MOST Hub gave us the space for it.
What we learned next
The argument is the format. The talk earns attention, but the room comes alive when the slide stops changing and people start disagreeing about where the first real money is. More table, less stage.
Want in on the next one? The date lands on Discord and @1nska first — and if you want to host or sponsor a cafe, see ohms.club/events.