The Importance of Optimizing Concrete with Real-Time Aggregate Data  

Podcast Transcript

Sarah McGuire:

Hello, concrete revolutionaries and welcome back to another episode of Building Better with AI. I’m your host, Sarah McGuire, and today we will be discussing the importance of optimizing concrete with real-time aggregate data, which directly impacts the ability to leverage AI to its full potential for quality control in ready-mix. Mark Masotti, who has joined us today, is the CEO and co-founder of alterBiota, on a mission to modernize and decarbonize concrete through advanced aggregate analysis and renewable admixture solutions. Mark holds a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from Queen’s University and holds nearly two decades of experience in heavy civil construction and solutions for the industry.

alterBiota was founded in 2021 and has been capturing the interest of the concrete industry ever since. Mark, welcome to the podcast. Really happy for you to be here because we’ve been working together now for, gosh, maybe a year and it just feels like we’ve done so much. And I just feel like more people need to know what you’re doing. Another Canadian tech company is a success, so we want more people to know about it. Can you start by telling us what you think we all should know about you and the company and what you’re doing?

Mark Masotti

Yeah, actually, I just want to make a point that I’ve been friends and allies with the Giatec team for going on five years, like literally from day one. So you guys have been huge champions and supporters of ours. And so, yeah, we at alterBiota are set on working with this industry to change the way things that are done. And that means using circular materials, finding scalable byproducts from industry to assist with the decarbonization and improvement of performance of concrete using our deltaC admixture.

Also, to put forth new digital tools for helping to address some of the pain points in the concrete industry, primarily to do with aggregate. So, we are here to sort of bring those two solutions to the industry and help advance things along.

Sarah McGuire

That’s a fantastic way to start. And it’s not just that you’re seeing the focus on aggregates as being important, but you’ve really made a point in the way that you speak about your technology to focus on what we can be doing for carbon reduction in the industry, which has also become a much stickier topic in the last little bit. It was trending, it started to be impactful. And now we’re seeing a bit of a downturn in that even in our own country. It’s not just a North American thing, but even in Canada as well. I’d really love to know what inspired you to focus on that aspect.

Mark Masotti

Well, I got exposed to the construction industry from a very young age. But then as I went into school, I decided not to focus on construction, but to focus on other things. I took chemical engineering and focused my lens on things like sustainability, circularity, byproduct, valorization. And along my journey over the last 20 years or so, I gleaned a lot of interesting new ideas on how to extract value from byproducts, how to optimize industrial systems.

And in the last five years, I decided that I want to bring those elements into the concrete industry, the construction industry, where I sort of started. And so it’s kind of a homecoming for me to kind of bring some of the things I learned, you know, the 20 years in industrial optimization, et cetera, into the world of construction.

Sarah McGuire

So tell me, in a world where decarbonization is still very important, it’s still very much talked about, but I think we are seeing less investment in that altogether. What I hear from companies sometimes is that despite the fact that a lot of our technologies are meant to be reducing carbon, reducing costs, all of this, companies still are now being required to make an investment in newer operations, newer technology, et cetera, that allows them to be green and you’re still a price to that investment.

On our side at Giatec, we’re really proud to have some solutions that really enable the reduction of carbon, but we’re also focused on enabling the ROI in other ways. So where are your customers able to find that ROI that can help them justify investing in a better future?

Mark Masotti

Yeah, I think one of the challenges with practice of decarbonization is that it usually involves new materials, right? And production of concrete is very complicated, even with the addition of new materials. I mean, the switch in North America from type 1 or general use cement to type 1L or GUL cement, where it’s like 5 to 15% limestone.

But even just that switch caused enormous headaches, right? That applies for any new binder material, any new admixture material, any new aggregate, recycled concrete aggregates or synthetic aggregates or whatever. And so even though our core business started with, you know, this renewable admixture that’s made for biochar that helps, you know, decarbonize and optimize concrete, we realized that there’s a pain point in the production of concrete and that’s aggregates. And by addressing that pain point and helping bring tools to the industry that can, you know, shine a light, which is something we’re literally doing onto these aggregates, it all of sudden makes adoption of new materials for decarbonization easier beyond sort of helping to improve and reduce costs and quality.

Sarah McGuire

And so we’re going to come back to you explaining in detail exactly what you’re doing with aggregate testing. But first, you brought up a really interesting article before we got on this call about what AWS is doing in their sustainability report. And I see that they’re really focusing specifically on concrete is what they’re calling out. For those that didn’t read it, can you summarize what your take was from this and why we need to be paying attention to this?

Mark Masotti

Yeah, so Amazon made a statement recently where they laid out their roadmap for decarbonization of their data center build-outs that they’re doing across the world. And in that they talk about using novel materials, using advanced software technologies, et cetera, to unlock the future of sustainability for these facilities. And so, the thing that really struck me about their statement was that they’re addressing and acknowledging that legacy materials like fly ash and steel slag are important today, but that we really need to look beyond them.

And I think that’s one of the most relevant statements I’ve seen from a big player like that in a long time, because there’s been a huge focus on, you know, those legacy materials, but we really need to look past them. So good on Amazon Web Services for acknowledging that there’s so a lot of work to do it, you know, that we need to invest.

Sarah McGuire

Yeah, it’s actually really nice to see these larger companies coming out and saying, you know, not just, hey, we want to see reduction by this percentage, and we’re pushing everybody to do it, but being very practical and observing the real issues that are hitting our industry, they are actually knowledgeable about what they’re asking for, you know, and everyone’s gonna have their own take on the solutions. I think yours would be weighted behind, hey, look at what we’re doing.

But overall, they are actually pointing out a really important problem. And it’s nice to see that level of awareness. You know, usually we talk about people are asking for these things and specifiers ask for these things, but they don’t actually know the challenges that we face in our industry. So it’s refreshing to see that, I think.

Mark Masotti

It is absolutely. And I think it’s probably been a journey for them. They probably started with one perspective and after four or five years of looking for those solutions and waiting for them, they’ve realized that it’s a long game and so, you know, good for them. And I think they’ve probably heard from the producers, the specifiers and the engineers and also the producers of concrete that it’s not just, you don’t just snap your fingers and introduce a new material. And there are also challenges associated with optimization of mix designs, which you guys know full well from your business. And so, yeah, it’s a multi-pronged approach we need to solve the decarbonization of our built environment.

Sarah McGuire

Yeah! So, before we move on from that topic, you know, you and I have known each other for a year because 2025 was really the commercial year for alterBiota. And you’ve gotten to experience the feedback from so many different types of customers at this point. I would love to know what their take on, you know, you going to market with a focus on green building and how they have received that and what they are experiencing.

Mark Masotti

Yeah, I think the big thing that we’ve heard is they appreciate our practical approach. You know, we’re not the flashiest company. We don’t do a lot of press releases, but we like to focus on the voice of the customer, you know, spending time understanding what it is that keeps them up at night or motivates them during the day. And the greatest feedback that we’ve heard about our two products, our admixture product and our digitalAggregate product is that they seem really built for concrete. It’s not sort of some abstract thing that we’re trying to wedge in, but it actually addresses the real practical concerns around the complex practice of concrete production.

Sarah McGuire

That makes a lot of sense and I love to hear that. However, I think you could do more press releases and flashy as well. Because I remember being at the Command Elevate Conference in October of 2024 and it was your first time there meeting quite a lot of people and you were the guy with the sieve testing in his pocket. And so that is pretty neat. That was very unique. You caught a lot of eyes. People asked me, who the heck is this guy that’s super cheerful and…

Mark Masotti

and has like samples in his pockets and he’s like, hey guys.

Sarah McGuire

Listen, he happens to be really good friends with the woman that carries a slump meter around in her purse. So there you go. We’ve got a lot in common there. But this industry, the way that they are with hearing the success of other people around them, that’s half the marketing that you need, right? So, and you’re doing some great stuff there.

Mark Masotti

And you know, one of the things that I’ve learned about this industry, because I spent a lot of time as a young man in construction, like the hardcore civil construction space, but like it wasn’t until alterBiota that I really got into the weeds on concrete and it’s about showing up. After people see your face three or four times and they hear you asking some intelligent or semi-intelligent questions. They’ll start to give you respect, right? But before that, you’re just another face in the crowd. And so if you don’t show up and put in the time, you’ll never make it anywhere in this industry. And it is really one that’s built on relationships.

Sarah McGuire

Absolutely. And you know, I said, now that we’ve introduced to who you are, what you’re doing and all of that, I want to get really into the details of what you said, how are you changing the way that we’re doing aggregate testing today? Because this is really the thing that has brought in a lot of attention. And it’s certainly something that we have benefited from as well. When we’re trying to promote the concept of real time optimization, you need real time data. Without that data input, you don’t have the ability to do that. And there’s a lot of other data sources that we’re going to have to chase. But thank goodness that we have a partner in you. So tell us, what you are doing and why we should care.

Mark Masotti

Yeah, so I like to say that man invented fire, then the wheel and then the sieve, and it has not changed. Right? Man has been using that sieve for a long, long time. And, you know, that has served us well in some ways, but I think it’s also like some other old tools, like maybe slump testing is ready for a revolution. And, you know, we’re not the first ones to talk about imaging aggregates and characterizing them, but we take a bit of a different approach.

And it’s also 2025 when the computation, the imaging, and the communication technologies are advanced enough that you can now, using the phone in your pocket and a simple scale reference like I’m holding in my hand, which you can’t see because it’s radio or podcast or whatever, you don’t need a sieve anymore. You can take a photo of your aggregates and you can get an incredibly rich data profile on them. That includes not just the passing dimension that you would get from the classical sieving, but another dimension because it’s a two-dimensional image, but then also a couple dozen other shape, size, and texture features that are really important to the fresh and hardened properties of concrete that we produce.

So yeah, we’re looking beyond Sieving, right? Sieving is an outdated practice, time consuming, riddled with error, and is not very conducive to optimization platforms, right? Optimization platforms like say Giatec SmartMix are built on data and data integrity. And the title of that data is correlated to the outcomes that are being observed by a platform like SmartMix, the better that it can utilize that data and do forward-looking predictions based on data like that.

Sarah McGuire

And tell me how that’s being received. Like how complicated is this to set up? How easy is this to invest in and get going? I think you have a couple of different options to make some more accessible to others.

Mark Masotti

Our ultimate focus is to get as close to the batch as we can, right? I think that’s something that drives both of our organizations is like batch specific data. And so our ultimate goal and something we’re working on together, which I think some of the public knows about is real-time inline imaging of aggregates that could be correlated with fresh properties and then using say something like MixPilot and then even further down the line, the hardened properties using things like SmartRock, but ultimately we’ve realized in engaging with industry that yeah, that’s interesting.

 But right now, there’s an acute challenge around just collecting data in lab settings at the core settings. So as a result, we developed a tool that is a sieve in your pocket. So anybody equipped with the app that’s available on both the Android and iOS stores can start to characterize aggregates anywhere in the world on the fly, as long as you have an internet connection.

Sarah McGuire

You said anywhere in the world, do you get into issues with different units of measure and how that all comes in and imports and anything like that? Have you seen that that’s been universal?

Mark Masotti

Well, I mean, there are certain regional standards that come into effect. Canada, CSA, US, ASTM, Europe, EN, stuff like this. But generally speaking, everybody around the world uses a common practice. They might have slightly different aggregate characterizations and gradation categories and things like this. But the application of an imaging tool, an image analysis tool to derive data from aggregates is universal.

Sarah McGuire

That’s huge when we’re talking about in an environment where you truly are on this path to decarbonization. But when we think about a big thing that we need to realize is if you really want to achieve that, you have to go worldwide. You know, we can do as much as we want over here, but the big players for that, where you’re really going to make that impact is worldwide.

And so, to be able to find a space that you can own and innovate in that is fairly standard throughout the world that makes that so accessible and really encouraging, honestly. I think when you get into things that are too complex from each region, but hey, you have some standardization work to do, do you not? I understand that you’re involved in some committees in ASTM in order to change the way that people see that. Can you tell us about that?

Mark Masotti

Yeah, absolutely. You know, we’re not alone in using the you know, these super computers and super cameras in our pockets, right? They’re used around the world for various types of applications. But in the concrete industry, you know, everything is driven by standardization, you know, whether you’re sitting or pulling a slump cone or measuring air entrained, whatever it is.

You know, irrespective of what we do with the images, because we do a lot with them after we get them to convert them into predict weight-based distributions and derive a whole bunch of other shape and size features, but irrespective of that, you know, there needs to be a standardization of like the image collection and how many images represent, you know, for a given aggregate size or category, how many images represent statistical significance. so we’ve been working very hard with the ASTM committee on aggregates to develop a standard for digital imaging of aggregates, which is like the starting point, right?

And then, you know, like that anybody can take images and do what they want with them. I mean, we just so happen to have a tool after those images are taken to create value from those images. But, I mean, ultimately it’s, a way to standardize that image collection process so that, know, whether it’s alterBiota’s digitalAggregate or, you know, somebody else’s tool, that takes images in terms of something, at least we’re all sort of collecting those images in the same way and using the same formulas for calculating the various shape and size features that, are, you know, known to like academic communities but not very well known to your average producer of concrete despite them having quite an effect on the concrete properties. Things like angularity and roughness and circularity and all these things that we hope in five years people will just be talking about casually at concrete gatherings.

Sarah McGuire

That’s an incredible goal. I think we have had our experience with standardization as well. And we’ve always found that it’s very difficult for them to keep up with innovation. But the fact that you have sought to prioritize that right out the gate, I think will go a long way in actually changing the industry. And I think that’s huge.

I am curious, you know, so far you’re coming on like your annual year of commercialization. We’re doing a lot of reflection. This podcast episode is going to come out right smack in the middle of US Thanksgiving, because ours is different. And Christmas, and I think a lot of people are doing a lot of end of year reflection. So I’d love to hear from you, you know, what have been some of the biggest challenges and objections that you’re getting from people as you’ve been getting out there, that you need the whole industry to kind of work together on overcoming?

Mark Masotti

Yeah, I think there’s this idea of optimization, right, for concrete. I think, and I mean, this might be controversial, but the focus, the focus has been how do you, how do you reduce cement? How do you remove cement? And there’s a common refrain that we hear and it’s yeah, but cement’s my cheapest insurance policy. And you know, as you dig, as you dig deeper into that, you understand that, I mean, they’re using it to take the edge off the variability, right?

And the variability is, I mean, there’s some variability in the cement, so put more in and maybe you can deal with that. But ultimately it’s the aggregates. You know, aggregates, again, make up such a huge proportion of the concrete, 75-80%. And they’re all locally produced, produced from different materials, produced different ways. And I mean, despite the best efforts of the producers of these aggregates, there’s variability. And so how is that addressed?

Well, you overdose your cement because, you know, you have a little extra cement in there, you have a little more spacing and you take care of the roughness or the angularity or the, you know, the non sort of conforming gradation. So, our view is one of concrete can be done with precision, you know, like why not talk about precision concrete and talk about what, what, what amount of cement does your mix actually need? Right? And it’s not like, oh, set it every month or set it every year. And then, you know, make sure there’s enough in there that you can take care of that variability, but actually like track it.

And like, it’s like, Oh, you have your mean sort of morphology or gradation for your aggregates that would require a mean amount of cement. But the minute you deviate from that mean value, right? Whether it’s up or down, depending on the shape or size feature, then you adjust. You put a little more cement or a little bit less. So, ideally on the whole, it becomes less over time. But really, the optimization problem needs to become optimal, not less all the time. It’s just what’s the optimal amount?

Sarah McGuire

I love that. We, I’ve said that a lot to people, you know, we end up in, people think about concrete optimization, and they think about taking out cement. That’s it. And they think I can do that myself. And you know what, Mark, the reality is, that at a small scale, what we are doing, a lot of people can do 90% out of it on the back of a napkin if you have that time, right? Like in theory you can, but who’s got the time for that? You know, people, when they plug our system in for SmartMix, for the mix optimization.

The first thing that they want to look at is their top 10 mixes. But the reality is, is that if they’re any good at their job, then they probably already have those dialed in. And the people that we’re working with that see this as the future that want to try this, yeah, they’re the ones that care. So they’ve got it dialed in. You may see a little movement on them, don’t get me wrong, but where you’re really going to see that happen to you is when materials change or they go up and down in quality or something is changing from a batch or you change suppliers. It’s not even the things that are as dramatic as changing from a 1 to a 1L, although that’s substantial. It’s still, it’s there’s so much fluctuation that happens and people have come to us and said, well, you know, eventually I’m going to optimize, optimize, optimize, and I’m going to be done.

Well, look at what AWS just put out and look at what you’re talking about here. Materials are going to be changing consistently for years to come. And it’s interesting, I will say I didn’t really know much about aggregate at all until we started partnering with you because I didn’t need to know, you know, for what I was working on, it wasn’t something that was in my purview because I didn’t need to know. And it quickly became very important because you just said it’s 70 to 80 % of concrete. We have, concrete is the second most used material in the world next to water. But whenever we’re talking about concrete mixtures, we’re always talking about water to cement ratio the most. Like, well, we’re not talking about the bulk of the actual concrete itself. How interesting is that? Like that is an interesting conversation that we need to be shifting that a little bit and, we’re seeing so much movement already with our customers now that we’re getting this data in real time. The ability for them to actually optimize their workability in real time.

It’s not about reducing all the time. Sometimes optimized means get the best. That’s it. Sometimes the best means you’re adding more cement because you’ve got a huge standard deviation that should be a red flag to somebody. And we’d rather have that than somebody tearing out. It’s not the most common, but risk adjustments are just as important. So, I think people will start to see that over time, but we are really, we’re in a see it to believe it industry. So, we know that. So, tell me about your see it to believe it experience. Like what have people used and then gone, whoa, I didn’t expect this. Like tell me about that.

Mark Masotti

I think that’s where this whole, I’m a chemical process engineer and we’ve got a few others on the team and sort of we’re always thinking about optimization and inline and process design and stuff like this. We were very focused early on on this idea of inline, at the point of batching, but then this summer, or actually it was last summer, engaged with customers, we realized that there’s this need for in the pocket tool. And that’s been transformative for us because, and there’s two reasons for that.

The first one is, you don’t need to invest into anything. You can literally have a trial of our software. Everybody has the phone in their pocket already. You go out and you test it. You say, hey, I’m doing my sieves and I’m going to side by side, I’m going to check this and I’m going to verify that this thing works. And so that’s a way for people to verify, right? Against, you know, sitting in the lab or whatever it is. But for us, it’s also this way to gather data.

Because I mean, you guys know better than just what anybody in the industry, it’s all about training sets, right? Data for training. And the easier it is for us to get training data, the better our models become. And we’re already on our fourth version of our, what we call a sieve equivalent model, where we take a two dimensional image and we predict the weight based distributions. And, that’s because we have amazing, like I like to call them industry, they’re investors, because they’re investing their time and their money and their, I mean, you know, their resources, right into providing data to us. And it’s like, hey, here’s a sieve. And here’s the images of that material we just sieved. And we’re like, thank you very much.

This is all going towards the improvement of this model. So that has helped the adoption a lot. I mean, showing people how it progresses, because like, you know, when we first got started, we were, it’s like, what were we really good at? We were really good at, you know, the three-quarter inch stone, nominal Max stone that everybody uses for your average concrete mix. But then as we started to see other types of aggregates, the error would be a little bit higher. But then we say, just send us a few data sets where you got sieve and images. And we’re able to keep training our models and training our models to improve the spectrum of aggregates. And then we just keep growing and growing and growing.

And I mean, to the point now where we’ve actually worked with 96 different aggregates types. And I think we’re almost at a thousand different sieves that are tied to images throughout North America. And so our training set’s quite large. If we had to do that with inline technology, it would take a while because you got to deploy hardware and stuff like this, whereas everybody’s already got super cameras in their pockets. So we’re putting those to work and it helps a lot.

Sarah McGuire

That’s amazing, because the ability to gather data really quickly and you’ve enabled that for your customers. So, then they can use the bigger item on the side and they’ve done half of that work for them is huge and helping them build an ROI early. Right? I also, I just have to accent what you said saying that people are investors because they’re investing their time. I love that. That’s an amazing statement. And it’s really true, especially, you know, companies like ours, both of ours, you know, Giatec’s been doing this a bit longer, but we’re only 15 years old. That’s not really old in this industry. We would not be here without those types of investors. And that’s just it, because at the end of the day, I’ve had lots of people say to me quite recently, like, you have industry experience. No, I don’t. I’ve never been in a batch, you know, okay, I’ve been to a batch plant.

But I’ve not been there batching concrete myself or being out there solving a problem on site for a customer, right? I’m not that type of industry experienced, but I’ve benefited so much and I’ve learned so much about the industry because people have taken their time, they’ve invested their time into sharing their problems with me, so that we can help solve them. And I think that’s huge with folks like us, you know, yes, you have some industry experience, but we couldn’t do that without them. And I think that’s, I think companies that recognize that go really far, but I’m biased because it’s a big part of our strategy. So fair enough.

So Mark, before we move on from, you know, what you’re doing at alterBiota, it sounds like you’re playing a really large role in bridging the gap between the academic and the real world. But people have been talking about doing that for a very long time. I mean, we hear about people going to these ASTM conferences and saying there’s going to be a lot of things that we’re going to do, but things that just never get done.

So what do you think is changing now? What’s happening in the world? What’s happening in the industry? What’s happening with even your competitors, the landscape? Why is now the time?

Mark Masotti

Well, I think it’s the availability of these digital technologies, imaging tech, computation tech, cloud infrastructure, 5G connectivity, like all these things. You can take 20 pieces of aggregate, whether they’re coarse or fine, doesn’t matter, and put them on a desk and measure them and then make mortar or concrete in a lab. Like, wow, look at the effect of gradation or particle packing or roughness aspect ratio, you name it. But, if you can’t like, that’s not concrete. I mean, concrete is like, you know, thousands of tons of material every day at single operations. I mean, you can’t rely on the like these bench scale techniques, you need, you know, things that are actually scalable. And so we’re able because of I mean, let’s be honest, where phone technology is and computer vision technology is at the root of it, it’s what digitalAggregate is like an application of computer vision.

That’s what’s allowed it to happen. And so yeah, now we’re able to take these concepts that have, you know, kind of sat in academia. And like academics have been talking about them. And I mean, there was even a device built some years ago called the Ames device, which was like you fill a carousel on a benchtop device with like 20 aggregates, and it’ll give you shape and size characteristics of them. But it’s like, what good is 20 aggregates? You know, you need like 2000 aggregates to get like statistical significance from a sample.

Somewhere around that range. So, like these tools allow that to happen. And so now, you know, we’re not stepping directly into all of these novel shape and size features that exist that we collect. It’s more like easing the transition by creating these, what we call, sieve equivalents, which are in the old language that people speak, like gradations. But behind all that is this rich set of data, this rich set of novel data, which we’re trying, we’re starting to socialize and we’re starting to educate people on. I mean, also learn more about ourselves as we start to correlate it to other technologies that give like data on outcomes like MixPilot or what have you. And so, yeah, it’s a combination of factors that are coming together, but it ultimately is progressing computer vision that’s happened in the last five years.

Sarah McGuire

You know, I think there’s another one that as you were talking, especially about the exchange of data, availability of data, all of that. The other thing that comes to me is the movement of other stakeholders in the industry of leveraging that technology, right? You’re building your systems and platforms with new age technology. And there’s a lot of other tech stacks that are going through that movement. And if they didn’t, well, you wouldn’t be able to plug into that. Right?

So there’s, there’s just a general shift of change that’s happening in the industry as well, but it really is about the partnerships and the full ecosystem, just like the reason that our companies are working together. You know, ultimately we want to optimize concrete, but we can’t do that without the data source. And that, you know, does lead us into a really nice conversation about SmartMix and digitalAggregate and what we’re doing together.

But before we get to that, I’m curious if there’s anything else from an industry perspective, because for us, we really hedged our bets that people were going to start moving off to the cloud. And that was something that we did not, we could influence, but we were not in direct control of, but that we built our technology based on that assumption. And we said, we hope that we’re right about this. And, you know, again, influence, but we can’t directly control. Are there any things that need to happen in the industry over the next few years for your technology to really have the full impact that you want where you’re not in direct control but you are directly impacted?

Mark Masotti

Yeah, I think that the digitalAggregate technology has a number of value propositions associated with it. And I think what we don’t want is for it to just be this like quick QC tool where, I used to do, I used to do saving manually and I would do one sieve analysis a day because I that’s all I had time for, and now I can do five a day with digitalAggregate and I save a whole bunch of time and I can do other stuff. That’s an important part of breaking through, right?

But what we don’t want is for it to stop there. Right? Our ultimate vision is a vision of precision, of precision concrete where it’s, it was actually like part of this like holistic, you know, multivariate combinatorial optimization of concrete where you’ve got data coming from all sorts of points and you’ve got these really advanced models, right? Like Roxi and SmartMix, et cetera, that can take all these data points and see things that other people couldn’t see before.

Nobody had time to sit down and analyze before, right? And so we want to make sure that that full transition continues, right? And I think it is, I don’t think there’s anything that can stop it at this point, to be honest. But we want to make sure that that happens. But you know, the other thing that was kind of surprising to us, and this is going back to sort of like the basic use of like the phone app and stuff like this for in a QC setting is that we’ve learned that it’s going to be important for succession planning, right? And like human resource, just human resources. It’s really hard to find people who want to go and run to a quarry and collect a sample and go to a lab and split it and dry it and sieve it and all these things. The young generation is not really looking for those types of jobs. They prefer more low touch digital stuff.

We’ve actually heard a lot of people say, yeah, we’d hire these people but they wouldn’t put their phones down and we couldn’t get them to put the phone down and pick up a sieve and it’s like now you can just keep the phone in your hand but go out to the buyout.

Sarah McGuire

Great, we’ve resorted to enablement at this point, but you know what?

Mark Masotti

It was an interesting thing that we didn’t really expect. And again, like we kind of started with this process optimization mindset, but now we’re realizing that this actually addresses like a major quality management, quality control challenge in the industry, so it’s exciting. But again, we don’t want it to stop there. We want to keep going. It’s incumbent on groups like Giatec and you guys do fabulous work at this, like moving the dial. But on us also to keep, to not just get stagged and be like, we’re happy enough with this, but to keep pushing toward that vision of precision concrete.

Sarah McGuire

First of all, if you haven’t already, precision is the concrete vision, is the new slogan that needs to go on your t-shirts for whatever you are doing because that is perfect because it’s quick, it’s short, it’s easy to put on whatever swag you want. So I think you need to think about that, love that. But I’m happy that you touched on the human aspect of these things because that’s not where I assumed that you’d go, but that’s the one that I always think of is that ultimately people need to be aware.

I don’t like this concept that don’t worry AI is not gonna take your job. Listen, we’re already past that point. We’re seeing it happening, okay? It is happening. But just the same way that we, everybody used to have, you know the thing that is really hard for me to wrap my head around that is obviously going to age me, but whenever I’m talking to some of my colleagues and friends in the industry, many of them worked on the road like I do quite a lot. They worked in a time where you didn’t really have easy access to things on your mobile.

I think when did BlackBerry first kind of start having emailing on your phone, 2003, 2004, right? Somewhere in there, maybe a little bit earlier, but when it became like more common for people. So think about, yeah, before the 2000s, when people traveled for work, they left things at the office, wrapped things up, and came back two weeks later. They may call in once in a while, they may have checked their voicemail from here and there, but they were not reachable or very difficult to reach.

Now we have everything like in our pocket where we can do things super quickly. I can probably do the job of five people of what it would have taken for people to do, you know, 20 years ago because I’m enabled now. However, there’s more jobs now. There’s a different type of jobs. Everybody used to have secretaries. We don’t really need that anymore. We do have office administrators that are super helpful, but they do something completely different. Some people have EAs, but it’s far less common. So when I think about it like that, you know, AI is going to take away a big amount of jobs, but it will create more. But like you said, the person that doesn’t want to have to go out and do the sieve test, I kind of think it’s a really big opportunity for people in our industry that are willing to get their hands dirty. It doesn’t need to be the norm, but if you’re willing to get your hands dirty, you’re going to have stability. This is a huge time, but these folks need to be ready to embrace technology and learn it. And that’s a really big thing that needs to happen if you’re going to get the full benefit.

Cause like you said, you have to be able to see it all kind of coming together for you to then take this data and have it make an impact as opposed to I was able to improve my aggregate testing like we want you to do more with that. And that’s a great segue into, okay, well that’s what people are doing with digitalAggregate today. And its speeding things up that they need to do day to day. But now that data is coming into SmartMix, and it’s coming into a greater ecosystem. So why don’t you share with folks listening, the difference between using it isolated versus using it in the broader ecosystem in the partnership we have together?

Mark Masotti

I mean, it’s such an important relationship that we have. If it was like what I just described, right, would probably be what would happen with a tool like digitalAggregate if it weren’t for partnerships and collaborations like the one we have, because what we offer to SmartMix and MixPilot, you know, is a new source of data, right? And what SmartMix and MixPilot offer to us is a new value proposition for what we’re doing. And I think it’s this beautiful, beautiful sort of cycle that…that we’ve entered.

I mean, data is king, right? When it comes to optimization and the closer the data is to the outcomes and the more accurate that data is, the better the system, the black box system, the SmartMix or whatever is able to predict. Right? And so, you know, by having this source of data that’s connected to outcomes, that’s showing variability in real time.

And it’s like, that’s why all the proportions were the same, but our mix needed more water to achieve our fresh properties targets. Now we understand. I mean, people for a long time have predicted it’s the aggregates and they’ve said, it’s the aggregates or, aggregate moisture or whatever, which is a whole other subject. But now you can actually see it. Right? And so in addition to that, and then one of the interesting things that we’re working on with a common partner in this industry, BARD Materials, is, you know, trying to have batch specific gradation tickets.

And it’s not just for optimization, right? But it’s just for like record keeping and like having an audit trail, you know? So if there ever is a dispute as to something that happened with a mix, you can say, well, actually like the batch ticket has the gradation information and that gradation information is tied to images and images are refutable. And so there’s some really interesting things that come up with that regard. But yeah, ultimately we’re in a data hungry world. And any new points of data that can come are going to assist with achieving our targets of precision call and optimize.

Sarah McGuire

Precision concrete, there it is again. I think that’s going into 2026. That’s what I’m seeing on the t-shirts already. Listen, Mark, I think we have learned so much already. Even I learned a lot of new stuff, even about what you’re doing, where you’re going, and we’ve been working together so closely. I have one big question for you, which is you said that there are other companies that are doing what you’re doing. So what makes alterBiota special? What makes alterBiota unique from what else is happening out there?

Mark Masotti

I think the accessibility, right? Like it’s, we’ve made it accessible via the, mobile component, right? Using like just the phone in your pocket. But you know, I think the big thing is, and we’ve, heard this a couple of times is it’s a technology that’s built for concrete right? It’s made for the concrete industry. There’s been other technologies out there that have, you know, analyzed aggregates and like FRAG or MUC, from the mining industry, but like that’s not the same thing.

I mean, people, you know, in concrete have different requirements. They have different things that they’re looking for. And the fact that we were not only trying to collect this information, but we’re trying to also find new data and then, but also bring it to the edge and into partnerships like we have with you folks. But also it ultimately helps to unlock the potential for use of our admixture product, right? Just to kind of bring it full circle, which we, that’s what we want to do is we want to make it easier to adopt new materials, right? In addition to, you know, understanding those ones that you currently are using. And so I think that’s where it’s a little bit unique because it’s also a little bit unique because it can help with that. And we offer both those solutions.

Sarah McGuire

Well, Mark, my final question is, is there anything else that you want the listeners to know about you, about your mission to modernize and decarbonize concrete through specialty aggregate testing? Is there anything else that you want to leave the listeners with?

Mark Masotti

Well, we’re really excited to be part of what we see as a paradigm shift in this industry. I mean, there’s really nothing that can stop it now. I think we’re excited to have partners and mentors like Giatec who have in many ways plowed the field for us. Others under the Canadian ecosystem like CarbonCure, Carbon Upcycling. I mean, I’m learning about more and more every week, Progressive Planet out in BC. It’s just, there’s a lot happening up here in Canada.

And we’re really excited to bring it to the world. And I think that the spirit of collaboration that we’re seeing in this latest, this next generation that is really exciting and we’re excited to be part of it. And we we want people who are interested in collaboration and testing out new things and come see us, come find us. And I mean, you can find us if you already know Sarah, come see us through her or her team, or just look for us on our website at www.alterbiota.com.

Sarah McGuire

Or look for us together in partnership at World of Concrete at the very large green Giatec booth in the North Hall. I don’t remember our booth number, but we’re always in the North Hall in the technology area. We will also be at ConAgg ConExpo promoting the same kind of thing. And every time we get together, we’re able to share more and more customer success stories together. So I look forward to being able to do that in January. Mark, thank you so much for joining. It was amazing talking to you and we’ll see you in January.

Mark Masotti

Thanks Sarah, very much. This was a lot of fun.