The a16z Show

Vishal Misra returns to explain his latest research on how LLMs actually work under the hood. He walks through experiments showing that transformers update their predictions in a precise, mathematically predictable way as they process new information, explains why this still doesn't mean they're conscious, and describes what's actually required for AGI: the ability to keep learning after training and the move from pattern matching to understanding cause and effect. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company.

In this episode, originally aired on Big Technology Podcast, Olivia Moore discusses whether AI startups can compete with the big chatbots, why American sentiment toward AI is so negative, and what she learned from giving LLMs personality tests. She also breaks down where ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini are diverging, why Open Claw signals a new wave of agentic products, and what makes memory the most underrated feature in consumer AI. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company.

Marc Andreessen joins David Senra for a conversation about entrepreneurship, history, and what drives some of the world’s most ambitious builders. In this conversation with David, Marc reflects on patterns he’s seen across great founders, why many of them focus relentlessly on building rather than introspection, and how technology and entrepreneurship continue to shape the future. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company.

This conversation with Emil Michael, undersecretary of defense for research and engineering and acting director of the Defense Innovation Unit, was recorded at the a16z American Dynamism Summit in Washington, D.C. Michael walks through how he inherited a department running 14 undefined technology priorities, cut them to six, and made applied AI number one. He also gives the first detailed account of why commercial AI contracts written under the previous administration created a vendor-lock crisis that put active military operations at risk. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company.

This conversation with Alex Karp, cofounder and CEO of Palantir, was recorded at the a16z American Dynamism Summit in Washington, D.C. Karp discusses the role of technology in modern warfare, Silicon Valley's obligations to national defense, and why he believes America's single greatest competitive advantage is its ability to cultivate and protect unconventional talent. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company.

In this episode, previously aired on Cheeky Pint, Garrett Langley describes how a stolen gun in his Atlanta neighborhood led him to build Flock Safety, now deployed in more than 6,000 cities and involved in clearing over a million crimes last year. He covers how the product has evolved from license plate cameras to drones, real-time 911 integration, and an AI-powered orchestration layer for city safety. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company.

Anish Acharya speaks with Olivia Moore about the latest edition of the a16z Top 100 AI Apps report. They cover why ChatGPT is still 30 times bigger than Claude on web, how the three major platforms are specializing for different users, what global adoption data reveals about cultural attitudes toward AI, and why agents, memory, and voice are about to change everything. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company.

Daisy Wolf speaks with Dr. Andrew Huberman, professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford University and host of the Huberman Lab podcast. They discuss how the pandemic sparked a consumer health revolution, the emerging peptide and GLP landscape, what the science actually says about focus drugs, and the neurotechnologies Huberman believes will let us write to our own biology within the next five years. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company.

Alex Rampell and Erik Torenberg speak with Mike Cannon-Brookes, cofounder and CEO of Atlassian, about how to make sense of the SaaS selloff, why not all software companies face the same AI-driven risks, and how Atlassian is thinking about the shift from records to processes. They also examine the real design challenge of getting everyday users to trust and benefit from AI agents in enterprise workflows. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company.

In this conversation, previously aired on TBPN, John Coogan and Jordi Hays speak with Ben Thompson, founder of Stratechery, about his essay "Anthropic and Alignment" and the broader collision between AI power and state power that the Anthropic–Department of War standoff revealed. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company.

a16z general partner Julie Yoo talks with Nikhil Buduma, CEO and cofounder of Ambience Healthcare, to discuss how AI is transforming clinical workflows. They cover the early days of deep learning, why Ambience started by running a medical practice before building a platform company, and what it takes to achieve high clinician adoption rates at major academic medical centers. They also dig into the challenge of building products when AI capabilities change every few months, the real ROI that's finally converting CFOs, and why this might be the moment to reimagine the legacy EHR stack. Resources: Follow Nikhil Buduma on X: https://twitter.com/nkbuduma Follow Julie Yoo on X: https://twitter.com/julesyoo If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to like, subscribe, and share with your friends! a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company.

On the show Long Strange Trip, Sequoia Capital partner Brian Halligan speaks with a16z’s Ben Horowitz about what separates great founder CEOs from everyone else. Ben explains why first-time founders lose confidence, defer too much to senior hires, and let decision debt paralyze their companies. They discuss where founder mode works and where people are taking it too far, why the VP of Sales is the hire founders mess up more than any other, and why Andy Grove's "constructive confrontation" matters more than most CEOs realize. Ben also shares what he's learned working with Zuckerberg, what Jensen Huang and Elon Musk actually have in common, and why culture is defined by behavior, not values. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company.

In this feed drop from the Internet History Podcast, host Brian McCullough speaks with Chris Dixon, general partner at a16z, about his path from 1980s hobbyist programmer to one of the most prominent venture capitalists in tech. Chris traces his career from quantitative finance to founding SiteAdvisor, cofounding Founder Collective, starting an early machine learning company, and eventually building a16z's crypto practice from the ground up. They also discuss his framework for spotting unconventional investments, the current state of crypto regulation, and why New York is becoming a serious tech hub. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company.

Erik Torenberg, Ben Horowitz, and Marc Andreessen discuss how the media landscape has fundamentally changed and what a16z is doing about it. They cover why offense beats defense, why individuals now matter more than corporate brands, why speed wins in the new media landscape, and the difference between oral and written culture on the internet. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company.

Bloomberg's Odd Lots hosts Joe Weisenthal and Tracy Alloway speak with David George, general partner at a16z and head of the firm's growth fund, about why $5 trillion in tech market cap now sits in the private markets, how that figure has grown 10x in a decade, and what it means for founders, employees, and investors. They also cover SPVs, tender offers, the collapse of legacy software valuations, and why AI companies may be speed-running the path to public markets. This episode originally aired on Bloomberg's Odd Lots podcast. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company.

Moonshots host Peter Diamandis speaks with Ben Horowitz, cofounder and general partner at a16z, alongside regular cohosts Salim Ismail, Dave Blundin, and Dr. Alexander Wissner-Gross, about whether AI can or should be paused, what happened when Horowitz told a Biden administration official that regulating AI means regulating math, why crypto is the natural money for AI agents, and why the gap between AI capability and societal adoption may be wider than people think. This episode originally aired on Peter Diamandis's Moonshots podcast. Follow Peter H. Diamandis on X: https://x.com/PeterDiamandis Follow Ben Horowitz on X: https://twitter.com/bhorowitz Follow Salim Ismail on X: https://twitter.com/salimismail Follow Dave Blundin on X: https://twitter.com/DavidBlundin Follow Dr. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company.

Michael Truell, CEO of Cursor, sits down with Patrick Collison, CEO of Stripe and an investor in Anysphere, to talk about Collison's history with Smalltalk and Lisp, the MongoDB and Ruby decisions Stripe still lives with 15 years later, why he'd spend even more time on API design if he could do it over, and whether AI is actually showing up in economic productivity data. This episode originally aired on Cursor's podcast. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company.

a16z's Martin Casado and Sarah Wang join Latent Space hosts Alessio Fanelli and Swyx to discuss what makes this AI investment cycle unlike anything in the history of venture capital. They cover why the lines between venture and growth, apps and infrastructure are blurring, how frontier model companies can raise more than the aggregate of everyone built on top of them, and why the industry-wide gap between perception and reality has never been wider. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company.

a16z's Angela Strange and Gabriel Vasquez speak with Carlos García Ottati, founder and CEO of Kavak, about building Latin America's largest online used car marketplace across Mexico, Brazil, Chile, Argentina, and the Middle East. They discuss why building in emerging markets means constructing four businesses underneath your business, how Kavak replaced copilot tools with AI agents handling 90 to 95% of customer interactions, and what it took to go flat for a year during the transition before growing four times on the other side. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company.

In this episode from WSJ Invest Live, Andy Serwer speaks with Katherine Boyle, general partner at a16z, about the American Dynamism practice she helped launch four years ago. They discuss why saying "America" out loud stunned Silicon Valley in 2022, how Russia's invasion of Ukraine changed everything, and what it means to invest in companies that support the national interest. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company.