Circuit hub has something very interesting in the works. They're a few steps ahead of us.

We however plan to own the full stack, from design to board bring-up and testing. We believe that design is becoming commoditized with AI tools, but these systems need manufacturers that are involved from the start to bring down lead times.

what do you mean by in the works? i've used them for years and they were in YC over a decade ago

sounds like your goal is to be an embedded systems job shop based on AI instead of engineers? What's your value over existing AI-accelerated job shops that leverage existing quick-turn domestic PCBA suppliers? as a not-so-random example, https://otekengineer.com/

Yes, though it was only somewhat recently that they transitioned to building their own automated facility.

We don't plan to do the design ourselves, we realize that our users will be using AI design tools that need to be integrated with the factory. We will build that link.

what's your vision for that link?

it's not clear to me what the interface to the user is, or who the user is

A PCB design tool that has manufacturing built in, for use by humans or agents.