$390M acquisitions, collapsing UK confidence, and robots quietly lining up to take real jobs.
In this week’s Bricks, Bucks & Bytes episode:
🚨 AECOM buys Consigli for ~$390M and the industry can’t agree if it’s genius or insanity.
📉 UK Construction PMI crashes to 39.4, the steepest downturn in 5.5 years.
🤖 Robotics funding heats up as labor efficiency hits a hard ceiling.
But that’s not all:
Dustin DeVan dissects why AECOM may have overpaid by nearly 200x revenue.
Martin Piekarz questions whether $390M could’ve built the same product twice over.
And Owen breaks down the hidden politics of “buy vs build” inside giant consultancies.
🎧 Listen now for:
Why public companies buy instead of investing in R&D (Wall Street optics exposed)
The real danger for startups after hyperscale acquisitions
Why AI “king-making” is warping startup valuations
What the UK downturn really means for contractors on the ground
Why robots, not software, are the only path to double-digit productivity gains
🗣 Bonus: Some personal highlights
Dustin closed an investor breakthrough at a coffee shop run by ex-convicts
Owen chose his house based on walking distance to a pub (elite site-selection logic)
Martin lives minutes from the Thames and Hyde Park (but denies all royal ambitions)
The team reveals the Great LLM Debate, a UFC-style AI showdown now in motion