AI + a16z
Artificial intelligence is changing everything from art to enterprise IT, and a16z is watching all of it with a close eye. This podcast features discussions with leading AI engineers, founders, and experts, as well as our general partners, about where the technology and industry are heading.
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How AI Is Reshaping IT Services from the Inside
<p>Joe Schmidt speaks with Peter Doyle, CEO of Treeline, about why the $100B managed service provider market is a decade behind modern technology and how Treeline is building a new model that combines human technicians with AI and automation. They discuss the company's growth strategy, why pure play software struggles in services categories, and what the forward deployed engineer trend tells us about AI adoption.</p> <p> </p> <p>Resources:</p> <p>Follow Peter Doyle on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/peterwdoyle/ </p> <p>Follow Joe Schmidt on X: https://twitter.com/joeschmidtiv</p> <p><p>Check out eve...
Patrick Collison on Stripe’s Early Choices, Smalltalk, and What Comes After Coding
<p>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.</p> <p>Follow Patrick Collison on X: https://twitter.com/patrickc</p> <p>Follow Michael Truell on X: https://twitter.com/mntruell</p> <p>Follow Cursor: https://www.yo...
OpenClaw: Why the Internet Isn't Built for AI Agents
<p>Yoko Li, Guido Appenzeller, and Joel de la Garza discuss OpenClaw, the open source personal AI assistant that's forcing a rethink of how identity, permissions, and security work on the internet. They cover why setting up Gmail integration took seven hours, what happens when an agent asks for domain-wide access to every email in your company, and why consumer websites like DoorDash and Amazon have no incentive to make their services agent-friendly.</p> <p> </p> <p>Resources:</p> <p>Follow Yoko Li on X: https://twitter.com/stuffyokodraws</p> <p>Follow Guido Appenzeller on X: https://twitter.com/appenz</p> ...
What's Missing Between LLMs and AGI - Vishal Misra & Martin Casado
<p>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.</p> <p> </p> <p>Resources:</p> <p>Follow Vishal Misra on X: https://x.com/vishalmisra <br> Follow Martin Casado on X: https://x.com/martin_casado</p> <p> </p> ...
Replit's CEO on Vibe Coding, Wealth Building, and What Most People Get Wrong About AI
<p>Jack Neel speaks with Amjad Masad, CEO at Replit, about how AI is making it easier than ever to build and ship software without a technical background. They discuss Replit's rise from a browser-based coding tool to a platform generating $250 million in annual revenue, why Masad turned down a $1 billion acquisition offer, and his case for why AI represents empowerment rather than existential risk. This episode originally aired on The Jack Neel Podcast.</p> <p> </p> <p>Resources:</p> <p>Follow Amjad Masad on X: https://twitter.com/amasad <br><br> Follow Jack Neel on X: https://twitter.com/ja...
Jack Altman & Martin Casado on the Future of VC
<p>Jack Altman sits down with Martin Casado, General Partner at a16z, to unpack the shifting dynamics of venture capital and why media matters more than ever. They cover a16z’s evolution from generalists to specialized platforms, the rise of AI infrastructure, and why today’s fiercest battles are often for talent, not market share.</p> <p>Timecodes:</p> <p>0:00 Introduction</p> <p>0:27 Importance of Media for VC</p> <p>3:50 Evolution of a16z</p> <p>7:00 Specialization</p> <p>10:32 Value of Distribution</p> <p>13:16 Staying Power in Infrastructure</p> <p>19:49 The Conflicts Dynamic</p> <p>26:32 State of Play in A...
AI’s Capital Flywheel: Models, Money, and the Future of Power
<p>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.</p> <p>Follow Alessio Fanelli on X: https://x.com/FanaHOVA</p> <p>Follow Swyx (Shawn Wang) on X: https://twitter.com/FanaHOVA</p> <...
Durable Execution and the Infrastructure Powering AI Agents
<p>Raghu Raghuram, Managing Partner at a16z, and Sarah Wang, General Partner at a16z, speak with Samar Abbas, CEO of Temporal, about how durable execution became the infrastructure layer behind some of the world’s most widely used AI agents. They cover why long-running agents require state management and recoverability, how Temporal powers OpenAI’s Codex and Snap’s Story processing, and why the shift from interactive to background agents is creating distributed systems challenges at a scale that didn’t exist two years ago.</p> <p> </p> <p>Resources: </p> <p>Follow Samar Abbas: https://x.com/SamarAtTem...
Evals, Feedback Loops, and the Engineering That Makes AI Work
<p>Martin Casado speaks with Ankur Goyal, founder and CEO of Braintrust, about where engineering actually matters in AI and where it doesn't. They cover the open source vs closed source model cycle, why Chinese models are gaining ground faster than spending suggests, whether AI demand will eventually saturate, and the Bash vs SQL benchmark that challenges the "just give it a computer" approach to agents.</p><p>Follow Martin Casado on X: https://twitter.com/martin_casado</p><p>Follow Ankur Goyal on X: https://twitter.com/ankrgyl</p> <p><p>Check out everything a16z is doing with...
Sam Altman on Sora, Energy, and Building an AI Empire
<p>Sam Altman has led OpenAI from its founding as a research nonprofit in 2015 to becoming the most valuable startup in the world ten years later.</p><p>In this episode, a16z Cofounder Ben Horowitz and General Partner Erik Torenberg sit down with Sam to discuss the core thesis behind OpenAI’s disparate bets, why they released Sora, how they use models internally, the best AI evals, and where we’re going from here.</p><p>Follow Sam on X: https://x.com/sama</p><p>Follow OpenAI on X: https://x.com/openai</p><p>Learn more about Open...
