The a16z Show

We're excited to share a special feed drop from The a16z Crypto Show. In the first episode of First Principles: The Scientific Roots of Blockchain Technology , Tim Roughgarden and Ittai Abraham trace the decades of computer science research that laid the foundation for modern blockchains. Long before Bitcoin, researchers were studying one of distributed computing's hardest challenges: how independ...

As part of our summer replay series, we're revisiting one of our favorite conversations from the past year. Mark Zuckerberg and Dr. Priscilla Chan join Ben Horowitz, Vineeta Agarwala, and Erik Torenberg to discuss the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative's ambitious effort to help cure, prevent, and manage disease by the end of the century. Rather than funding individual breakthroughs, CZI is focused on bui...

Adam Neumann joins Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz, and Erik Torenberg for a candid conversation about entrepreneurship, failure, and building Flow. Neumann reflects on his childhood, military service, immigration to the United States, the rise and fall of WeWork, and what he learned from one of the most scrutinized founder journeys in technology. He explains why Flow is focused on rethinking housin...

Seema Amble, Steven Sinofsky, and Elena Burger unpack one of the biggest questions facing enterprise software: what happens when AI agents become the primary users of software instead of humans? The conversation explores the rise of "headless" software, why APIs and agentic workflows are reshaping enterprise applications, and whether traditional SaaS products are becoming systems of record rather...

In this commencement address to Columbia University's Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science Class of 2015, Ben Horowitz challenges some of the most common advice given to graduates. Rather than urging students to “follow their passion,” Horowitz argues that people should focus on developing their strengths and making meaningful contributions to the world. Drawing on stories from...

Ben Horowitz is joined by Anne Neuberger, Raghu Raghuram, and Jen Kha to discuss a16z's expanding international strategy and the growing role technology plays in economic growth, national security, and global partnerships. The conversation explores why America's technology leadership matters beyond Silicon Valley, how AI is reshaping relationships between governments and the private sector, and wh...

What does it take to build a global mobility company from a country of just 1.3 million people? Markus Villig, founder and CEO of Bolt, joins the show to share how he scaled from Estonia to 50+ countries, navigating early scrappy days, a near-bankruptcy from expanding too fast, and the hard-won lessons behind Bolt’s capital-efficient growth. They also discuss building in Europe vs. the U.S., compe...

Rick Rubin joins Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz, Anjney Midha, and Erik Torenberg to discuss creativity, artificial intelligence, and his book The Way of Code , which reimagines the Tao Te Ching for the age of AI. The conversation explores vibe coding, remix culture, artistic process, entrepreneurship, and what AI changes, and doesn't change, about creativity. Rubin argues that AI is best understoo...

Yoko Li speaks with Luma's Head of Applied Research Matt Tancik and Phota Labs cofounder and CTO Zach Xia about how AI is changing creativity, photography, and the tools people use to make art. The conversation explores the evolving relationship between artists and AI, from image generation and personalization to creative workflows, controllability, and agentic design tools.  They discuss personal...

Marc Andreessen joins CSIS's Navin Girishankar for a wide-ranging conversation on artificial intelligence, productivity growth, industrial policy, and America's technological future. Andreessen argues that while AI has already begun reshaping the economy, the largest impacts are still ahead. He explores how AI could dramatically expand access to expertise, improve productivity, and transform indus...

Kevin Weil, the previous CPO & Vice President of Science at OpenAI, joins Speedrun to discuss the future of AI, scientific discovery, and startup building. After helping build products at Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, Weil is now focused on one of AI's most ambitious applications: accelerating science itself. He explains why modern AI models are beginning to solve problems that sit beyond the...

Michael Malice sits down with Marc Andreessen to discuss artificial intelligence, technological progress, economic growth, and the future of human flourishing. Drawing on decades of experience spanning the birth of the commercial internet through today’s AI boom, Andreessen argues that many of the most common fears about technology are rooted in a misunderstanding of how innovation creates opportu...

Anish Acharya speaks with Microsoft VP of Design John Maeda and Impeccable founder and CEO Paul Bakaus about how AI is changing the practice of design. The conversation explores the relationship between design and technology, the rise of AI-powered creative tools, and whether automation raises the floor, the ceiling, or both. Maeda and Bakaus discuss software craftsmanship, taste, creative judgmen...

Anish Acharya sits down with Josh Elman to discuss the future of consumer technology and Josh's decision to join a16z. Over the past two decades, Elman has helped shape some of the most important consumer technology products and companies, including LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Robinhood, Discord, Musical.ly, TikTok, and Apple. Drawing on those experiences, he reflects on how technology has evolve...

Jake Paul and Geoff Woo join the podcast to announce Anti Fund’s new $100 million growth fund and discuss the evolution of their investment strategy. The conversation covers the fund’s portfolio, including investments in companies such as SpaceX, OpenAI, Anthropic, Anduril, Cognition, Etched, and Modal, as well as the lessons they’ve learned backing founders and identifying emerging technologies....

Recorded live at the New Media Summit, Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz, Erik Torenberg, and Gaby Goldberg discuss how media, communication, and influence are changing in the internet era. The conversation explores the shift from legacy media to creator-led platforms, why authenticity has become a competitive advantage, and how founders can build audiences by communicating directly with customers, em...

Angela Strange and Gabriel Vásquez speak with Addi founder and CEO Santiago Suárez about building one of Latin America's largest financial platforms. What began as a buy now, pay later product has evolved into a broader ecosystem spanning payments, commerce, logistics, and now banking. Serving millions of consumers and tens of thousands of merchants, Addi sits at the intersection of financial serv...

Jack Altman joins Speedrun to discuss product-market fit, customer feedback, hiring, fundraising, and the realities of building an enduring company. Drawing on his experience building Lattice from startup to multi-billion-dollar company, Altman explains how founders should think about customer requests, when to pivot, and why some of the hardest decisions come from balancing conviction with market...

Yoko Li and Justine Moore speak with Ideogram founder and CEO Mohammad Norouzi about image generation models, design workflows, and the evolving relationship between AI and creative work. The conversation covers Ideogram's decision to release an open-weight model, the challenges of generating text and layouts within images, and why controllability has become an increasingly important area of resea...

Theo Jaffee speaks with Samo Burja, founder of Bismarck Analysis, about AI, industrial capacity, economic growth, and the institutions that shape civilization. The conversation explores how AI’s demand for compute, energy, and infrastructure could trigger a new wave of industrial expansion, benefiting sectors far beyond technology. Burja argues that AI is not just a software story but a demand sho...

Erin Price-Wright speaks with Alex Modon, cofounder and CEO at Unlimited Industries, and Davide Asnaghi, CEO at Diode Computers, about how AI is moving from software into the physical world. They discuss automating construction and electronics design, using code and simulation to model real-world systems, and how incentives and manufacturing constraints shape adoption. They also examine what it ta...

Wyatt Thomson of OpenAI speaks with economists Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok about AI, labor markets, and the future of economic growth. The conversation explores one of the most common fears surrounding AI: that increasingly capable systems will eliminate jobs. Cowen and Tabarrok argue instead that economic growth remains the key variable. Throughout history, productivity-enhancing technologies h...

Erik Torenberg speaks with tech analyst Benedict Evans about the current state of AI, what has changed over the past year, and which questions remain unanswered. The conversation covers coding agents, foundation models, AI infrastructure spending, software economics, and the tension between today's AI excitement and the long-term realities of technology adoption. Evans discusses why coding has eme...

Sarah Wang speaks with Exa cofounder and CEO Will Bryk about building search infrastructure for the AI era. The conversation covers Exa’s origins, why traditional search engines were not designed for AI agents, and how search changes when the user is no longer a human but an autonomous system. They discuss retrieval, agent workflows, coding agents, data access, and why search may become a foundati...

Martin Casado speaks with George Fraser, cofounder and CEO of Fivetran, about the future of data infrastructure in the age of AI. The conversation covers Fivetran’s merger with dbt, the changing role of data platforms, and why Fraser believes many companies are overestimating the threat AI poses to enterprise software. They discuss open data access, the backlash against AI agents accessing systems...