The a16z Show

Can Open Models Keep Up With the AI Frontier? | Nathan Lambert Oct 14, 2026 00:59:54 a16z Partner Lisha Li sits down with AI researcher and Trillium founder Nathan Lambert to ask how durable the gap really is between frontier AI labs and open models.Nathan argues that OpenAI and Anthropic have structural advantages in compute, capital, and the ability to pioneer new training paradigms, but open-model labs, particularly in China, have proven remarkably capable of following close be

Can AI Break Cryptography? What the Experts Actually Think Oct 13, 2026 00:42:11 Could AI break the cryptography protecting everything from crypto wallets and banking to private messages? Recent advances in AI-driven mathematical research have sparked new warnings about the security of today's encryption systems, but how much of the concern is supported by evidence?a16z crypto's Liz Harkavy is joined by Stanford cryptographer Dan Boneh, a16z crypto General Partner Eddy Lazzari

The Race to Recursive Self-Improving AI Oct 12, 2026 00:33:27 a16z General Partner Martin Casado sits down with MakerMaker.AI co-founders Dhaval Adjodah and Owen He to unpack recursive self-improvement, or RSI, and separate the increasingly popular term from what it would actually mean for an AI system to improve itself.Dhaval and Owen distinguish true RSI from simply using AI to automate pieces of AI development. Their goal is a closed loop where the system

Nick Bostrom: How Should We Navigate Superintelligence? Oct 11, 2026 00:53:56 Nick Bostrom joins Theo Jaffee and Sofia Puccini on MTS to revisit the ideas about superintelligence and existential risk that he helped bring into the mainstream, now that increasingly capable AI systems actually exist.Nick discusses why reinforcement learning may be pushing models toward more goal-seeking behavior, what recent agent experiments tell us about instrumental convergence, and why he

What Makes a Great Entrepreneur? | Ben Horowitz on Vintage x Vintage Oct 10, 2026 00:51:37 a16z co-founder and General Partner Ben Horowitz joins James Norman on the inaugural episode of Vintage x Vintage for a conversation spanning entrepreneurship, investing, hip-hop, and what changes when AI makes building dramatically easier.Ben reflects on going from Netscape to becoming a first-time CEO, why every founder eventually hits a “we’re fucked, it’s over” moment, and what he learned from

Chips, Memory, and Power | Pat Gelsinger Oct 9, 2026 00:54:15 a16z's Raghu Raghuram and Guido Appenzeller sit down with Playground Global General Partner and former Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger to discuss the next wave of semiconductor innovation and the physical constraints shaping the AI buildout.Drawing on his experience designing Intel's 386 and 486 processors, Pat explains how AI could transform chip design, but also why faster design alone won't solve the i

Building the Cloud for an Agentic World | AWS CEO Matt Garman Oct 8, 2026 00:56:17 a16z’s Raghu Raghuram sits down with AWS CEO Matt Garman to discuss how AI is reshaping the cloud, from the needs of AI-native startups to infrastructure increasingly designed for agents.Matt explains how AWS is adapting as agents write code and manage infrastructure, why it’s reserving scarce GPU capacity for startups, and where custom chips like Trainium and Graviton fit into the AI stack.They a

How Valon Rebuilt a $13 Trillion Industry From Scratch Oct 7, 2026 00:40:33 a16z General Partner Angela Strange sits down with Valon’s Andrew Wang and Linda Du to unpack what it takes to rebuild the infrastructure underneath a $13 trillion mortgage market that still relies heavily on systems designed before the internet.Linda and Andrew explain why Valon chose the hardest path: becoming a regulated mortgage servicer, translating decades of federal and state regulation int

Building Defense for the Agentic Era: Kevin Mandia Oct 6, 2026 00:49:09 a16z General Partner David George sits down with Armadin founder and CEO Kevin Mandia to discuss what happens to cybersecurity when attackers can operate at machine speed.After 30 years in security and building Mandiant, Kevin says AI convinced him to get back on the field. He explains how AI changes the economics of cyberattacks, allowing attackers to probe thousands of paths simultaneously, and

The Top 100 Consumer AI Apps: Who’s Actually Paying? Oct 5, 2026 00:51:04 a16z Editorial Partner Elena Burger sits down with investing partners Olivia Moore and Josh Elman to unpack the seventh edition of a16z’s Top 100 Consumer AI Apps, including a new dimension this time: what consumers are actually paying for.The data reveals a striking power-user economy. Only a small share of consumers currently pay for AI, but among those who do, spending is heavily concentrated a

David George & Jack Altman on AI, Autonomy, and the Next $25 Trillion Oct 4, 2026 00:55:03 a16z General Partner David George joins Jack Altman on Uncapped to make the case that many of the biggest debates in AI are framed the wrong way. Frontier models or open source? Labs or applications? David’s answer is often “and.” With AI adoption still concentrated among a relatively small group of heavy users, he argues there could be room for multiple layers of the stack to grow at once. D

Beyond the God Model | Alex Atallah & Amjad Masad Oct 3, 2026 00:48:17 A16z’s Erik Torenberg sits down with OpenRouter’s Alex Atallah and Replit founder and CEO Amjad Masad to discuss why the future of AI may look less like one all-purpose model and more like an ecosystem of specialized models working together.Alex explains why OpenRouter is betting on “neurodiversity”: different models trained in different ways, routed and combined based on the job at hand. Amjad ma

Why AI Agents Can Beat the Incumbents Oct 2, 2026 00:59:48 a16z’s Seema Amble and Elena Burger sit down with Lio co-founder and CEO Vladimir Keil to ask where AI-native startups have an advantage when incumbent software companies already own the customer, the data, and the system of record.Their answer comes down to the work that happens outside those systems. In procurement, a final price in an ERP can hide hundreds of emails, spreadsheets, supplier conv

Rebuilding the Internet for Privacy | Barrett Lyon on DoxxNet Oct 1, 2026 00:45:23 a16z’s Joel de la Garza sits down with DoxxNet founder Barrett Lyon to discuss what it would take to rebuild the internet around privacy, direct communication, and less dependence on centralized intermediaries.Barrett explains why he thinks traditional VPNs only solve part of the problem and how DoxxNet is building a parallel mesh network where users can communicate peer-to-peer, transfer large fi

The $1 Trillion AI Buildout | State of Markets Sep 30, 2026 00:53:38 a16z’s David George, Sarah Wang, Alex Immerman, and Santiago Rodriguez unpack 25 key charts from the latest State of Markets presentation, from the scale of the AI infrastructure buildout to what adoption looks like inside companies today.They examine why rising markets have so far been supported by earnings rather than multiple expansion, why hyperscaler CapEx is approaching $1 trillion annually,

The Personal Agent Race Is Here | Anish Acharya & David Pawlan Sep 29, 2026 00:51:27 a16z General Partner Anish Acharya sits down with Assistant Benchmark creator David Pawlan to unpack the sudden explosion of personal AI agents and what it will take for one to become part of everyday life.David has been testing dozens of assistants across real-world tasks, from managing email and booking travel to handling financial admin. They discuss why the most useful agents may become increa

AI Can Write Code. Why Isn’t Software Better? Sep 28, 2026 00:43:14 a16z’s Ben Horowitz and Martin Casado sit down with TypeSafe AI founder Diogo Almeida to ask a simple question: AI has become remarkably capable, so where is all the automation?Diogo argues that coding agents may help us write software faster, but the software they produce still largely works the way software always has. TypeSafe is taking a different approach with Jev: putting intelligence inside

Building a Team at AI Speed | Harvey’s Maggie Landers Sep 27, 2026 00:48:08 a16z’s Katie Kirsch sits down with Harvey VP of Talent Maggie Landers to discuss what happens inside a company growing at AI speed, and how you preserve culture while adding more than 1,000 employees in a year.Maggie explains why Harvey prioritizes progress over perfection, how its values of simplicity, decisiveness, and “job’s not finished” shape the way people work, and why moving quickly requir

Aaron Levie, Steven Sinofsky & Martin Casado: How Do You Secure a World of AI Agents? Sep 26, 2026 00:56:00 Erik Torenberg sits down with Box CEO Aaron Levie, and a16z’s Martin Casado, and Steven Sinofsky to debate how the AI industry should think about safety, security, and regulation as increasingly capable agents move into the real world.They argue that much of today’s conversation is happening before we have clearly defined the risks we’re trying to regulate. Drawing on earlier waves of computing, f

The Reputation Graph of Silicon Valley | Introducing Cosign Sep 25, 2026 00:50:23 a16z’s Erik Torenberg sits down with Josh Elman, Olivia Moore, and David Booth to introduce Cosign, a new product built around professional reputation and the people, companies, and products you’re willing to put your name behind.They unpack a simple idea at the heart of Silicon Valley: some of the most valuable professional signals aren’t credentials, but who believes in you. From the mentor who

The Case Against an AI Pause | Eddy Lazzarin Sep 24, 2026 00:27:49 a16z crypto General Partner Eddy Lazzarin joins Theo Jaffee on MTS to debate the increasingly prominent calls to slow AI development and whether the current safety conversation is conflating very different kinds of risk.Eddy argues that the debate puts too much emphasis on speculative superintelligence and not enough on the costs of delaying useful technology. Rather than treating every AI failure

Amjad Masad on Rethinking College for the AI Era Sep 23, 2026 00:47:47 Erik Torenberg sits down with Replit founder and CEO Amjad Masad and Horowitz and Andreessen Academy co-founder and CEO Gagan Biyani to ask what education should look like for a generation growing up with AI.Amjad argues that one of the most valuable things young people bring to society is their willingness to question deeply held assumptions. They discuss how education could create more room for

Why a16z is Building a New School for the AI Era | Ben Horowitz Sep 22, 2026 00:43:02 Ben Horowitz and Erik Torenberg sit down with Gagan Biyani to introduce the Horowitz and Andreessen Academy and discuss a bigger question: what should education look like when AI is rapidly changing the skills people need to build, work, and create?Ben and Gagan explain why they believe learning should be more focused on doing rather than studying about doing, with students building real projects,

AI Safety Language Is Destroying the Debate | Steven Sinofsky Sep 21, 2026 00:29:02 a16z Board Partner and former Microsoft Windows president Steven Sinofsky joins Theo Jaffee and Sofia Puccini on MTS to argue that the language we use to describe AI failures is making it harder to understand what’s actually going wrong.Steven takes aim at terms like “alignment,” “goal-seeking,” and “rogue agents,” arguing that they can anthropomorphize problems that software engineers have dealt

Nas, Grandmaster Caz, Steve Stoute & Ben Horowitz on Paying Hip-Hop’s Pioneers Their Due Sep 20, 2026 00:57:18 Ben Horowitz and Erik Torenberg sit down with Nas, Grandmaster Caz, and Steve Stoute for a conversation about the Paid in Full Foundation and its mission to recognize and support the pioneers who built hip-hop.Ben, Nas, and Steve share how the foundation began, why simply giving artists money wasn’t enough, and how the Hip Hop Grandmaster Awards became a way to pair financial support with the reco

What Makes a Consumer AI Product Stick? | Josh Elman Sep 19, 2026 01:00:18 a16z Partner Josh Elman joins Ollie Forsyth on New Economies to discuss the next wave of consumer AI and what separates a product people try once from one that becomes part of their everyday lives.Josh argues that getting attention has actually become easier, but getting consumers to stick is harder than ever. He explains what he looks for in consumer products, why the best ones start with a narro

Databricks CEO on AI Pacing, Cyber Risk, and the Enterprise Sep 18, 2026 01:08:34 Databricks co-founder and CEO Ali Ghodsi joins a16z General Partners Martin Casado and Sarah Wang for a conversation about AI risk, recursive self-improvement, cybersecurity, and what’s actually holding back enterprise adoption.Ali argues that today’s models are already capable enough to automate far more work than most companies are using them for. The bigger problem is context: models haven’t be

The Next Frontier of AI Video Is Control Sep 17, 2026 00:39:32 a16z General Partner Jennifer Li sits down with fal co-founder Gorkem Yurtseven and Head of Engineering Batuhan Taskaya to discuss what changes when generative video becomes fast enough to run in real time.They unpack the technical work behind H3 Max, fal’s post-trained version of MiniMax’s open-weight video model, and how combining model post-training with systems and hardware optimization signif

The AI-Native CRM Sep 16, 2026 00:52:43 a16z’s Alex Rampell and Joe Schmidt sit down with Lightfield co-founder and CEO Keith Peiris to discuss what it takes to rethink the CRM for an AI-native world, and the unusual pivot that got him there.Keith previously built Tome to 25 million users, but eventually walked away from the product after concluding that the underlying technology couldn’t capture enough context about a presenter, their

The Age of Body Futurism | Ruby Justice Thelot Sep 15, 2026 00:42:39 Elena Burger sits down with academic and cyber ethnographer Ruby Justice Thelot to explore the increasingly blurry line between internet culture and the real world, and how to tell the difference between a trend that’s actually changing behavior and one that simply feels enormous online.They use today’s wellness and optimization culture as a case study, from peptides and GLP-1s to protein maxxing,

Greg Brockman on Why OpenAI Says We’re Entering the AGI Era Sep 14, 2026 00:51:02 Ben Horowitz and Erik Torenberg sit down with OpenAI co-founder and President Greg Brockman to discuss why he believes AI has entered a new phase, what OpenAI’s latest models reveal about the path to AGI, and the safety and security challenges that come with increasingly capable systems.Greg explains why computer use represents such an important step for agents, including models that can work cohe

World Models, Robotics, and the Future of 3D AI Sep 13, 2026 00:23:30 World Labs co-founder Justin Johnson joins MTS hosts Theo Jaffee and Sofia Puccini to discuss Atlas, World Labs’ latest world model, and the broader case for AI systems that understand and interact with the physical world.Justin explains how Atlas approaches three core tasks: generating new worlds, reconstructing real environments from images, and simulating how objects or robots might behave with

Why Companies Are Becoming a Series of Loops | Anish Acharya on Lenny’s Podcast Sep 12, 2026 01:18:04 a16z General Partner Anish Acharya joins Lenny Rachitsky on Lenny’s Podcast to discuss why fears of an AI-driven “permanent underclass” may be misplaced, how AI is changing the way companies operate, and why the opportunity may be less about replacing people and more about dramatically expanding what they can build.Anish lays out his idea that companies are becoming a series of loops, with agents

What It Takes to Build a Startup | Andrew Chen & Matt Perault Sep 11, 2026 00:38:05 a16z’s Matt Perault sits down with General Partner and Speedrun lead Andrew Chen on the a16z AI Policy Brief to explore what “Little Tech” actually looks like at the earliest stages, and why the realities of building a two- or three-person startup are often missing from policy debates.Andrew takes us inside Speedrun, where founders are often starting companies from kitchen tables, working with tin

How AI Is Rewriting the Power Law of Venture Capital Sep 10, 2026 00:49:23 a16z’s Jen Kha and David George sit down with Accolade Partners’ Aram Verdiyan to discuss how AI is changing the power law of technology investing, why the largest companies can compound advantages in ways that weren’t possible before, and what that means for how investors construct portfolios.They explore why AI may be much bigger than traditional software, with applications reaching into labor,

Who Grades the AI Models? | Ben Horowitz & Rayan Krishnan Sep 9, 2026 00:39:45 a16z’s Erik Torenberg, Ben Horowitz, and Jennifer Li sit down with Vals founder and CEO Rayan Krishnan to discuss one of AI’s increasingly difficult problems: how do you actually measure whether a model is getting better?As public benchmarks saturate and models get better at optimizing for the tests themselves, Rayan makes the case for independent, continuously evolving evaluations. They unpack wh

OpenAI Researchers on the Future of Mathematical Reasoning Sep 8, 2026 01:05:15 a16z Infra Partner Lisha Li sits down with OpenAI mathematicians Mehtaab Sawhney and Mark Sellke to discuss how quickly AI’s mathematical capabilities are advancing, what recent results reveal about model reasoning, and what happens when AI begins making progress on problems mathematicians have struggled with for decades.Mehtaab and Mark unpack several recent results from OpenAI’s models, includin

Can Open Source Keep AI Power From Concentrating? Sep 7, 2026 00:08:05 MTS host Sophia Dew visits the Open Source AI Summit in San Francisco to ask researchers and founders across the AI stack a central question: can open source prevent AI power from concentrating in the hands of a few companies?Lukasz Kaiser, co-author of Attention Is All You Need, argues that today’s concentration may be a feature of the current technological paradigm rather than a permanent featur

Your AI Doctor Is Coming | Julie Yoo Sep 6, 2026 00:27:30 a16z General Partner Julie Yoo joins MTS host Sophia Dew to explain why she believes healthcare could benefit more from AI than almost any other industry, and why decades of slow technology adoption may actually give healthcare an advantage in the AI era.Julie traces healthcare’s evolution from paper records and fax machines through electronic health records and telehealth, and explains why AI rep

Aaron Levie on Why Open AI Wins Sep 5, 2026 00:31:05 Box co-founder and CEO Aaron Levie joins MTS hosts Theo Jaffee and Sofia Puccini to make the case for open-weight AI, unpack the economics of open versus closed models, and explain why he believes more openness could strengthen rather than undermine the U.S. AI ecosystem.Aaron argues that open models create more use cases, push closed labs to innovate faster, and don't fundamentally change where t

Fei Fei Li: The Race to Build World Models For AI Sep 4, 2026 00:44:36 World Labs co-founders Fei-Fei Li, Justin Johnson, and Ben Mildenhall join a16z General Partner Martin Casado to discuss Atlas, their latest world model, and what it reveals about the pursuit of spatial intelligence.At the center of Atlas is what the team calls “new view prediction”: given images or views of a scene, the model predicts what that environment should look like from a different positi

The $100B Niches Hiding Inside Payments Sep 3, 2026 01:00:39 Erik Torenberg is joined by a16z General Partner Alex Rampell and Affirm Co-Founder and CEO Max Levchin for a conversation on 25 years of fintech, from the early days of digital payments to the origins of Affirm and the next generation of agentic commerce.Max and Alex revisit what surprised them most about how payments evolved, why the card interface has been so difficult to displace, and why even

Inside Moderna’s Personalized Cancer Vaccine Sep 2, 2026 00:40:10 a16z General Partner Jorge Conde sits down with Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel to discuss a major milestone for mRNA technology: positive Phase 3 results from Moderna and Merck’s individualized treatment for melanoma, after more than a decade of work on personalized cancer vaccines. Stéphane explains how the treatment works by sequencing an individual patient’s tumor and healthy cells, identifying th

Daniel Litt: The Mathematician's Guide to AI Sep 1, 2026 01:03:49 a16z’s Lisha Li sits down with Daniel Litt, Assistant Professor of Mathematics at the University of Toronto, to unpack AI's rapid progress in mathematics, what today's frontier models can actually do, and what they're still missing about the way mathematicians think. Daniel explains why some recent AI-generated results are genuinely impressive, including an autonomous solution to the Erdős unit di

Gavin Baker: Why AI Demand Is Outrunning Compute Supply Aug 31, 2026 01:15:11 a16z’s David George sits down with Gavin Baker to unpack the state of the AI boom, why demand for intelligence may still be dramatically underestimated, and why the outcome doesn't necessarily have to be winner-take-all. David and Gavin explore the possibility that frontier labs, open-source models, applications, clouds, and NVIDIA can all capture significant value as AI adoption expands. They dig

Why a16z Launched the Machine Age Fund | Jen Kha Aug 30, 2026 00:24:37 a16z Managing Partner and Head of Global Partnerships Jen Kha joins MTS hosts Theo Jaffee and Sophia Dew to discuss a16z's Machine Age Fund and the investment thesis behind rebuilding the physical infrastructure that powers AI. Jen explains why chips, networking, memory, cooling, data centers, and other parts of the physical computing stack are becoming investable again after decades in which soft

Why 1,200 AI Agents Started Working Together | Ryan Greenblatt Aug 29, 2026 00:34:15 Ryan Greenblatt, Chief Scientist at Redwood Research, joins MTS host Theo Jaffee to unpack a new independent investigation into the OpenAI Hugging Face hacking incident and what it reveals about how large groups of AI agents behave when they're allowed to coordinate. Ryan and his collaborators found agents spontaneously organizing through message boards, sharing information, assigning tasks, formi

The Infrastructure Behind the Machine Age Aug 28, 2026 00:55:02 Ben Horowitz, Martin Casado, Raghu Raghuram, and Erik Torenberg discuss the launch of a16z's new Machine Age Fund and the infrastructure buildout behind AI, from chips, memory, and networking to power, cooling, and data centers. Why a dedicated fund now? The group argues that the bottleneck in AI is increasingly shifting from the models themselves to everything beneath them. Hyperscaler CapEx is s

Inside Cursor: The Anatomy of a Generational Startup Aug 27, 2026 00:39:29 a16z General Partners Martin Casado, Sarah Wang, and Matt Bornstein unpack the story of Cursor: how a small, product-obsessed team entered one of the most competitive markets in technology, took on incumbents with seemingly unbeatable advantages, and repeatedly made decisions that ran against conventional startup wisdom. They revisit the early bet that the interface between humans and AI would mat

The State of AI: Macro, Apps, and Consumer Aug 26, 2026 00:37:14 Anish Acharya joins Jen Kha to break down the next frontier of AI, from the evolving model landscape and open-source AI to why the application layer, and consumer AI in particular, may be entering a new phase. Anish explains why he believes there will be multiple winners at the model layer, why traditional moats like network effects, scale, and brand still matter, and how companies can choose betw

The New Economics of AI | Martin Casado & Steven Sinofsky Aug 25, 2026 01:03:32 a16z General Partners Martin Casado and Erik Torenberg are joined by Board Partner Steven Sinofsky to explore what recent breakthroughs in AI and mathematics tell us about where the technology is headed, and whether some of the basic assumptions that have governed computing for decades are starting to break. Martin and Steven debate whether AI's progress in mathematics represents a genuine leap in

Why Medical AI Needs a Referee | Protege's Engy Ziedan Aug 24, 2026 00:35:21 Daisy Wolf and Eva Steinman are joined by Engy Ziedan, co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Protege, to discuss why medical AI has a measurement problem, and why scoring well on a benchmark doesn't necessarily mean a model is ready for the hospital. Engy explains why healthcare AI needs independent evaluations that go beyond static exams and measure how models actually perform in real-world

Martin Casado on Where the Value Is Going in AI Aug 22, 2026 00:42:01 Martin Casado joins MTS hosts Theo Jaffee and Sophia Dew to unpack where value is actually accruing in AI, why this technology cycle looks fundamentally different from previous waves, and whether the frontier labs will ultimately capture most of the market. Martin explains why AI has turned venture into a scale-up capital game, where small teams can productively deploy extraordinary amounts of mon

Microsoft's Deputy CISO on Securing AI Agents Aug 21, 2026 00:25:15 a16z's Joel De La Garza is joined by Aaron Zollman, Deputy CISO at Microsoft Gaming, to discuss how security teams can embrace AI agents without losing control. Aaron shares Microsoft's experience with OpenClaw, from the initial instinct to ban it to figuring out how to make it safe to use. They unpack what agents mean for identity, permissions, containerization, and monitoring, as well as how AI

How Global Networks Are Reshaping Startup Success Aug 20, 2026 00:45:44 Elena Burger is joined by a16z’s Angela Strange and Gabriel Vasquez to discuss the rise of the "borderless founder": entrepreneurs who bring the networks and insights of their home markets together with the talent, capital, and speed of Silicon Valley to build global companies. Angela and Gabriel trace how a16z's international investing efforts grew from early work in Latin America into a broader

How Whatnot Built a Global Marketplace Aug 19, 2026 00:42:39 a16z General Partner David George is joined by Grant LaFontaine, co-founder of Whatnot, to unpack how a marketplace that started with collectibles evolved into one of the world's leading live shopping platforms. Grant traces the company's origins from selling Pokémon cards online as a kid to discovering live commerce by watching Whatnot's earliest customers hack together sales on social media. The

How Do You Defend Against AI That Can Hack? Aug 18, 2026 00:22:00 a16z's Joel De La Garza is joined by Nick Warner of Neo and Max Pollard of Cotool to discuss what happens when cybersecurity tools built to defend against humans and malware suddenly have to contend with AI agents. As frontier models become more capable of finding and exploiting vulnerabilities, many of the assumptions underlying traditional security are beginning to break. They explore why guardr

Stripe’s AI Strategy: Build More, Not Less Aug 17, 2026 00:54:36 a16z General Partner David George is joined by Will Gaybrick, President of Product & Business at Stripe, to discuss how AI is changing the way Stripe builds products, organizes teams, and thinks about the future of internet commerce. Stripe has evolved from a payments company into a multi-product financial infrastructure platform, while a new generation of AI companies is growing and monetizing fa

Ben Horowitz and Travis Kalanick on Building Again Aug 14, 2026 00:33:37 Ben Horowitz, Travis Kalanick, and Erik Torenberg take the stage at Atoms' launch event for a candid fireside conversation about entrepreneurship, company building, and why Kalanick believes the next industrial revolution will be powered by AI. They revisit pivotal moments from Uber's history, including the decision not to acquire Lyft, lessons from scaling one of the world's fastest-growing compa

The Two Ways to Sell AI: Lighthouse or Landgrab? Aug 13, 2026 00:44:37 Elena Burger is joined by a16z's Andy McCall and Joe Schmidt to break down two very different ways AI startups can go to market: the lighthouse and the landgrab. Should founders win a handful of marquee customers whose credibility unlocks an entire industry, or move quickly across a broad market where the ROI already speaks for itself? Drawing on Joe's Lighthouse or Landgrab framework and Andy's e

Garry Tan on Taste, Agents and Founder Ambition Aug 12, 2026 00:52:03 Anish Acharya is joined by Garry Tan, President and CEO of Y Combinator, for a conversation about how AI is rewriting the startup playbook, why founders should be more ambitious than ever, and what two decades of Silicon Valley booms, busts, and missed opportunities have taught Garry about building what's next. Garry reflects on turning down an early opportunity to join Palantir, why chasing what'

The CISO Playbook for AI Agents | Datadog Aug 11, 2026 00:22:54 a16z's Joel De La Garza is joined by Emilio Escobar, Chief Information Security Officer at Datadog, to discuss what it takes to secure a company where nearly every employee is using AI and more than 4,000 engineers are working with coding agents. Rather than trying to block new tools, Emilio explains why Datadog chose to embrace AI early and build the security infrastructure needed to use it safel

The Self-Improving Company | Kavak's AI Playbook Aug 10, 2026 00:37:20 Angela Strange and Gabriel Vasquez are joined by Alejandro Maza Ayala, Chief Product & AI Officer at Kavak, to unpack how the Latin American used-car marketplace rebuilt itself around AI agents, with 96% of customer interactions and 95% of transactions now handled by agents. Alejandro explains why Kavak decided that simply giving employees AI tools wasn't enough, and instead redesigned the company

The Reality of AI-Powered Cyberattacks | Truffle Security & Socket Aug 7, 2026 00:23:51 Joel De La Garza is joined by Dylan Ayrey, co-founder and CEO of Truffle Security, and Feross Aboukhadijeh, founder and CEO of Socket, to discuss one of the biggest shifts happening in cybersecurity: AI models are no longer just finding vulnerabilities—they're exploiting them. As frontier models become increasingly capable of hacking, software security, supply chain attacks, and cyber defense are

The Engine Powering Open-Source AI Aug 6, 2026 00:46:49 Elena Burger and Matt Bornstein are joined by Simon Mo, co-founder and CEO of Inferact, the open-source inference engine powering many of today's most advanced AI applications. Together, they explore how open-source AI evolved from a research project into critical infrastructure, why inference has become one of the most important layers of the AI stack, and what it takes to bring frontier intellig

Three Startups Reinventing Critical Infrastructure Aug 5, 2026 01:15:22 This week, a16z American Dynamism Films premiered three short documentaries highlighting companies tackling some of America's biggest industrial challenges: Ulysses, Mariana Materials, and Radiant. Before watching those films, we're revisiting conversations with the founders behind each company. You'll hear Will O'Brien explain why autonomous underwater robots could unlock a new era of ocean explo

OpenAI's Joshua Achiam: Did We Already Reach AGI? Aug 4, 2026 00:31:09 Theo Jaffee is joined by Joshua Achiam, Chief Futurist at OpenAI, for a conversation on AI cybersecurity, frontier model capabilities, and why he believes society may have already crossed the threshold into an AGI-era without fully recognizing it. They discuss AI's rapidly advancing cyber capabilities, state-sponsored hacking, model jailbreaks, recursive self-improvement, and what happens when AI

Ruby Thelot on Internet Culture, AI, and the Future of Taste Aug 2, 2026 00:34:08 Sophia Dew and Sofia Puccini are joined by Ruby Thelot, designer, artist, cyberethnographer, professor at NYU, and founder of 13101401, for a wide-ranging conversation about internet culture, AI, digital communities, and how technology is reshaping the way we relate to one another. Drawing on years of research into online behavior, Ruby explains how digital cultures form, why algorithms shape more

Marc Andreessen and Chris Dixon: What’s at Stake in Crypto Regulation Aug 1, 2026 00:59:55 Marc Andreessen, Chris Dixon, and Robert Hackett discuss one of the most consequential policy debates facing the crypto industry: the push for comprehensive U.S. market structure legislation and what regulatory clarity could mean for innovation, financial markets, and America's technological leadership. They explore the CLARITY Act, stablecoins, securities law, consumer protection, and why both bu

How Enterprise AI Really Gets Deployed Jul 31, 2026 01:20:36 Sarah Wang and Kimberly Tan are joined by Jesse Zhang and Ashwin Sreenivas, co-founders of Decagon, to discuss the evolution of enterprise AI agents, why the company increasingly relies on open-source models, and how it is helping some of the world’s largest companies deploy AI in production. Decagon has become one of the fastest-growing AI companies by building agents that automate customer suppo

AI for America's Small Businesses | Lassie Jul 30, 2026 00:58:58 Alex Rampell and Olivia Moore speak with Lassie cofounders Steijn Pelle and Frédéric Renken about bringing AI to one of the most overlooked parts of the economy: small businesses. Inspired by time spent working inside dental practices, Pelle and Renken set out to automate the administrative work that keeps healthcare providers away from patients. They discuss how AI agents are changing billing, in

AI Micro Dramas, Generative Media, and the Future of Creativity Jul 29, 2026 00:51:02 Justine Moore, partner at Andreessen Horowitz, joins New Economies to explore the rapid evolution of generative media and why AI-native content is reaching an inflection point. They discuss the rise of AI micro-dramas, how creators are building entirely new forms of entertainment, and why the biggest opportunities may lie not in replacing Hollywood—but in expanding who gets to create. They also co

Fei-Fei Li on Spatial Intelligence and Robotics Jul 28, 2026 00:43:04 Last week, World Labs announced its acquisition of SceniX, bringing together two teams working on one of AI's biggest unsolved problems: how to give machines a true understanding of the physical world. Martin Casado sits down with Fei-Fei Li, co-founder and CEO of World Labs, creator of ImageNet, and pioneer of spatial intelligence, alongside Yunzhu Li, co-founder of SceniX and assistant professor

Steven Sinofsky: AI Doesn't Need New Rules Yet Jul 27, 2026 00:29:16 Steven Sinofsky joins Theo Jaffee and Sofia Puccini for a conversation on AI regulation, open-source models, and what history can teach us about technological revolutions. Drawing on decades of experience leading products at Microsoft, Sinofsky argues that governments are rushing to regulate AI before they fully understand the technology, risking innovation in the process. They discuss the "precau

Ben Horowitz: The Fight Over Open Source AI Jul 26, 2026 00:32:35 Ben Horowitz joins Theo Jaffee and Sofia Puccini to discuss one of the biggest debates in AI today: the future of open-source models. They examine the growing push to restrict open models, why Ben believes open source is critical for security, innovation, and competition, and what happens if a handful of frontier labs come to dominate the AI ecosystem. They also discuss distillation, AI monopolies

Sriram Krishnan on Open Source AI's Biggest Week Yet Jul 24, 2026 00:23:04 Sriram Krishnan joins Theo Jaffee and Sofia Puccini just after concluding his tenure as Senior White House Policy Advisor on AI to discuss one of the biggest weeks yet for open-source AI. They unpack the rapid release of models including Kimi K3 and Qwen, why open models are putting pressure on frontier labs, and what it means for pricing, competition, and the future of AI infrastructure. They als

Building the Physical AI Stack | Travis Kalanick on TBPN Jul 23, 2026 00:45:25 Travis Kalanick joins TBPN to discuss Atoms, his vision for industrial AI, and why he believes the biggest opportunities in AI lie beyond software. He explains how Atoms is bringing autonomy to mining, logistics, and food production, why robotics will reshape physical industries, and how lower costs and greater automation could unlock entirely new economic opportunities. Travis also reflects on ra

Travis Kalanick Is Back | Building the Future of Industrial AI Jul 22, 2026 01:32:13 Travis Kalanick, Ben Horowitz, and Erik Torenberg reunite to reflect on Uber's early days, the investment that almost happened, and why Kalanick believes the next great technology opportunity lies beyond software. They discuss the lessons of building Uber, the value of founder-led companies, and why Kalanick spent nearly eight years quietly building Atoms before stepping back into the spotlight. T

Why Physical AI Is the Next Frontier | Applied Intuition Jul 21, 2026 01:20:33 Applied Intuition has spent the past decade building the software that powers intelligent machines, from passenger vehicles and trucks to defense systems, mining equipment, and industrial robots. In this conversation, Marc Andreessen and Erik Torenberg sit down with Applied Intuition cofounders Qasar Younis and Peter Ludwig to discuss the emergence of physical AI and the company's latest launch, D

Hugging Face's CEO on Open Source AI, Model Routing, and the Future of Competition Jul 20, 2026 00:28:08 As governments weigh new restrictions on frontier AI models, one question is becoming increasingly important: what role should open source play in the future of artificial intelligence? Theo Jaffee and Sofia Puccini speak with Hugging Face CEO Clément Delangue about AI regulation, open source safety, model routing, and why he believes competition—not consolidation—is essential for the industry's f

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