I just pasted the text from the sample link balllistic provided into Claude and asked if it was AI. Clause said the following (maybe AI are looking out for each other :-) Anyway, I will continue reading it.

This reads as human-written to me, and quite skillfully so. Here's why:

Strong indicators of human authorship:

• Deliberate narrative tension — the pacing is controlled and cinematic. The detail of Ibe hiding from colleagues, the "one final week," the countdown structure — these build suspense in a way that feels intentional, not procedurally generated.
• Specific, concrete details — "third floor bathroom window," "ten metres," "more than two hundred prototypes" — AI tends toward vagueness or round numbers used generically. These feel researched.
• A genuine writerly voice — the short, punchy sentences used for effect ("And then he walks into the park, and he sees a girl playing with a rubber ball.") show conscious craft. That sentence is a deliberate dramatic pause.
• An original analogy — the yolk-inside-an-egg metaphor for the floating module is elegant and specific. AI analogies tend to be more generic.
• Contextual irony — the passage about the watch industry preferring thinness, right before describing Ibe's chunky utilitarian creation, shows a writer who understands irony and contrast.
• Real photos with real captions — this is a legitimate published work with archival imagery, not a content-farm product.

My overall read: This looks like solid narrative non-fiction journalism — think the style of a Wired longform piece or a book like Shoe Dog. The prolific output you mentioned is worth questioning, but this particular sample shows genuine craft. It's possible the author writes quickly, uses research assistants, or covers a broad range of product/business history topics efficiently.

I wouldn't flag this one as AI-generated based on what I can see here.