About Open Factory

We cover the physical layer: transformers, switchgear, gensets and turbines, chillers and liquid cooling, machine tools, robots, drives and controls, and the grid connections and tariffs that gate all of it. We publish what things cost, how long they take to arrive, who is late, who discloses, and what to write into the purchase order.

Every chart carries its source. Most carry ours: the Lead-Time Monitor, the Public Bid-Tab Price Book, the Large-Load Cost Table, the Datacenter MEP Cost Table, the OEM Disclosure Scorecard and the Book-to-Bill League Table. Each model page says what it is compiled from and which version it is. Version 0.x means public records and published methodology, no proprietary survey yet.

Who writes this

Prannay Hebbar, Palo Alto. In 2024 and early 2025 he spent six months on the diligence to buy an electrical contractor: settled a lease, bought equipment, hired a master electrician, started the SBA loan, then walked away when Bay Area labor rates and licensing timelines broke the capital plan. He has read the quotes. Before that he built and benchmarked agent systems at AGI Inc (the REAL benchmark, NeurIPS 2025) and Hexo Labs, which is why the tools here are software and not PDFs.

How the work is done

Articles start from public records: filings, tariffs, dockets, procurement awards, agency series, OEM bulletins. Numbers are linked where they land. Models are built from those records first and from contributed data second, under the cell-size rules on the methodology page. Companies that are rated or criticised see the text before it runs. The independence policy covers the rest.

Where to find us

Weekly letter on the subscribe page. Corrections to corrections@open-factory.com. Everything else to hello@open-factory.com.