Post by True Ventures

Most AI work is still stuck at the surface. The real shift is happening at the system level. This edition of True North looks at what’s actually changing: • Why agent stacks are becoming a new kind of attack surface and what that means for how this layer gets built • How constant human-in-the-loop can bottleneck, and what structured checkpoints unlock instead • Why token spend is becoming a real operating constraint, not just a line item • Why the moat in Physical AI is data, but the gap between hardware and software is still holding companies back And alongside that, a broader pattern: the companies that work increasingly feel like systems, not products: from Modern Animal to Madison Reed. If you’re building or translating this space, this is where the signal is.