Andreessen Horowitz (a16z)+

How Cursor Built One of AI’s Fastest-Growing Companies

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 matter more than building a coding-specific foundation model, why Cursor built its own product rather than a VS Code plugin, and how the founders' ability to say "no" became one of the company's definin

You are not a model. Don’t price per token.

Charging per token is becoming the default for AI companies. For most AI applications, it is a mistake.

The State of AI: Models, Moats, and the Consumer Renaissance

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 between frontier and open-weight models depending on the economics of the task. They also explore why models are increasingly specializing, and how applications can combine different types of intelligenc

Faking a brand is easy. Making it stop is hard.

The business of online impersonation

How AI Changes the Economics of Innovation

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 reasoning or simply a new tool for solving problems at a higher level of abstraction. From the four-color theorem and early computers to graphing calculators and today's models, they trace how new t

Intelligence is the Primitive. Applications are the Diffusion Layer.

How durable AI-native products can price, package and productize model gains for industry.

The Oracle Problem: an invisible bottleneck to AI and medicine

Is this model a good doctor, or was it good at the test?

Charts of the Week: Winds of Thematic Change

Data Centers Are A Blue Collar Bonanza; It’s Not Your Imagination–Ridesharing Really Is More Expensive; Agents Are Early, But They’re Already Changing Things

Rise of the Borderless Founder

Your background is your moat

The Opportunity for Global Founders

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 global network, and why AI has accelerated the flow of founders and talent between Silicon Valley and startup ecosystems around the world. They explore the advantages borderless founders can bring, f

Meet the a16z Talent Engineer Fellows

The 50 fellows we've selected to join the inaugural cohort

OpenRouter & Stripe: The Intelligence Network

OpenRouter is getting acquired by Stripe

How Whatnot's Live Shopping Beats Traditional E-Commerce

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. They discuss why Whatnot thinks less like a traditional e-commerce marketplace and more like a digital shopping mall, where discovery, entertainment, community, and commerce all happen at once. Today, u

Your Favorite Creator Isn’t Real—Does it Matter?

AI doesn't have to make the human behind the work less important. It can make it possible for more humans to show up in the work at all.

Tokens Are the New Dollars | Stripe's Will Gaybrick & David George

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 faster than previous software cohorts. Will explains why Stripe sees AI productivity as an opportunity to build more rather than simply cut costs, including how its internal coding agents now generate

Travis Kalanick: How AI Will Transform the Physical World

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 companies, and how Kalanick has evolved as a founder. The conversation also explores Atoms' vision for industrial AI, why software is moving into the physical world, what it takes to build enduring compan

Charts of the Week: Head In The Neoclouds

Return of Horizontal SaaS? Equity Disinflation?; Towards an efficient frontier of token-maxxing; Lab Talent Wars;

Cursor + SpaceXAI: the fastest iterating team wins

Move in the right direction, faster than anyone else.

Lighthouse or Landgrab? How to Pick Your AI Sales Strategy

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 experience building sales organizations at Samsara and Meraki, they explore how founders can determine which strategy fits their market, when social proof matters more than math, and why the current r

This Essay is 10% AI Generated

Pangram, Authorship, and French Theory

Investing in Vals

a16z invests in Vals

Garry Tan: New Rules for Founders

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's "hot" is often the wrong strategy, and why the best ideas tend to begin with people pursuing strange, earnest obsessions outside the mainstream. They also explore how AI changes the economics of co

What It Takes to Get Paid

How to ask for the money you're owed

Some Simple Economics of Open versus Closed AI

If the weights are free, who pays for the next run, and who will keep us safe?

Kavak's Playbook for Rebuilding a Company Around AI

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's systems, teams, and customer experience around agents. They discuss why Kavak spends as much engineering effort on evals as it does building agents, how its AI sellers outperform its human teams,

Can Agents Use a Computer Yet? We've Got the Data

When your heaviest users stop checking the leaderboard, the leaderboard has stopped being the story

AI Is Learning to Hack. Faster Than We Expected.

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 entering a fundamentally new era. The conversation explores AI-powered hacking, software supply chain attacks, leaked credentials, zero-day vulnerabilities, package manager security, and why the path

Charts of the Week: Bookslop

The Defense Backlog; IT Services → Cloud; Kimi’s Enterprise Play

How Open Source Became AI's Backbone | Inferact with a16z

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 intelligence to developers around the world. The conversation covers vLLM's origins, the rise of open-weight models, why companies increasingly want control over their AI infrastructure, and how open-source

Knowing When to Stop: The Art of Making a Loop Converge

The systems that matter will not be the ones that can keep going. They all can.

American Dynamism Film Series

A spotlight on three companies changing how we build, power and defend America

The Ocean Company - Ulysses | a16z American Dynamism

Ulysses is building autonomous underwater robots to become the technology platform for the world's oceans. From restoring underwater ecosystems to inspecting critical infrastructure and supporting maritime security, the company is rethinking how humans interact with the ocean. As demand grows for subsea cables, offshore energy, critical minerals, and defense capabilities, Ulysses is building autonomous fleets designed to operate continuously beneath the waves. GUEST SOCIALS Learn more about Ulysses: https://www.theoceancompany.com/ Follow Ulysses: https://x.com/UlyssesInc Follow Will O'Brien

The Future is Metal - Mariana Minerals | a16z American Dynamism

Mariana is rebuilding one of the world's most important industries: critical minerals. Led by Turner Caldwell, the company is taking a software-first approach to modern mining, combining automation, AI, and engineering to rethink how mines are built and operated. Every battery, robot, AI data center, and electric vehicle depends on metals pulled from the ground, and Mariana believes rebuilding that industrial capability is essential for long-term economic resilience, technological leadership, and national security. GUEST SOCIALS Follow Mariana on X: https://x.com/MarianaMinerals Follow Turne

The Nuclear Renaissance - Radiant |  a16z American Dynamism

Radiant is building portable nuclear microreactors designed to deliver reliable, carbon-free power wherever it's needed. By reimagining nuclear as a factory-built product instead of a decade-long construction project, the team is working to make clean energy easier to deploy for remote communities, military operations, AI infrastructure, and critical industries. It's a fundamentally different vision for how nuclear power can help rebuild America's energy future. GUEST SOCIALS Follow Radiant: https://x.com/radiantnuclear Follow Tori Shivanandan on X: https://x.com/torishiv Follow Doug Bernau

Base Power & the Future of Electricity

Electricity is a commodity, and the best electron is the cheapest electron.

Endeavor Optical Networks

Intercontinental bandwidth, without subsea cables

Investing in Volta

a16z co-leads Volta's Series A

Marc Andreessen & Chris Dixon: Why America needs CLARITY

And why no rules is the riskiest rule of all

Drug Discovery Has No Magic Wands

On AI, human biology, and what it will actually take to discover transformative new medicines

How Decagon Runs 90% of Its Agents on Open-Source Models

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 support, sales, and operational workflows. Jesse, Decagon’s CEO, and Ashwin, its president, explain how the company is building enterprise AI at scale. They unpack why Decagon moved most of its inference

Charts of the Week: Moar Machines

Entry Level Continued; The Industries Spending on AI

“Every small business should run itself” | Lassie with a16z

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, insurance claims, patient payments, and other operational workflows, allowing practices to spend less time on paperwork and more time delivering care. The conversation explores AI agents, software tha

The Hidden Math of Behavioral Health

Behavioral care is booming. Getting paid for it is the hard part.

Building Worlds That Train Robots

Real-to-sim-to-real (R2S2R) as a scalable engine for training and evaluating robot policies

Fei-Fei Li is Solving the Hardest Problem in Robotics | World Labs with a16z

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 at Columbia University. They discuss why World Labs acquired SceniX, how simulation can unlock the next generation of robotics, and why training robots may require a fundamentally different approach

The Next AI Moat Isn’t a Better Model

Everyone is betting on bigger models. But with physical AI, the intelligence isn’t the multiplier. Learning is.

Lighthouse or Landgrab? How to Pick Your AI Sales Strategy

Your buyer doesn't purchase the future; they purchase either proof or math.

Mark Zuckerberg on the only mistake that actually matters - giving up!

The lesson wasn't how to avoid problems. It was how to move through them.

Charts of the Week: Are Semis Cheap?

IRL is Back; Gen-Z’s Small Business Surge;

How to Win the Largest Market in AI

Production is the product.

Renting is stressful. Millions of renter conversations tell us why.

At least now, someone is there to answer.

Building a Company in Stealth | Travis Kalanick with a16z

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. The conversation explores industrial AI, robotics, autonomy, mining, food production, and Kalanick's vision for digitizing the physical world, where software, manufacturing, real estate, and transpor

Travis is Back

a16z is backing Travis Kalanick’s “new” company, Atoms

Unfinished Business

The Age of Atoms

Meet the a16z Forward Deployed Engineer Fellows

The 65 fellows we've selected to join the inaugural cohort

Making a Billion Intelligent Machines

Why build the tools instead of the vehicle?

Why Physical AI Is the Next Frontier | Applied Intuition with a16z

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, Dana, a new platform designed to accelerate the development of autonomous systems. 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. They explore autonomous vehicles, robotics, world models, simulation, AI infrastructure, and the engineering challen

American Dynamism Films: The Trailer

A16Z American Dynamism presents: Ulysses. Mariana Minerals. Radiant. Coming soon. -- Learn more about American Dynamism: https://a16z.com/american-dynamism/

The 7 Hires a Hardware Startup Needs to Get Right

Non-engineering hires determine whether a great product becomes a great business.

Investing in Neo

a16z leads Neo's Seed round

Connor Love

I’m thrilled to welcome Connor Love as our newest General Partner

"Meme Your Dream into Reality" | Replit CEO with a16z

Recorded live at the New Media Summit, Erik Torenberg sits down with Replit founder and CEO Amjad Masad to discuss founder-led storytelling, building in public, and the role of media in company building. Masad reflects on Replit’s decade-long journey, including the years before the company’s recent breakout growth, and explains why communicating a vision can be just as important as executing on it. He argues that for many founders, especially those building ambitious products ahead of the market, telling a compelling story is often necessary to attract talent, capital, and early believers. T

Charts of the Week: Software’s Selective Sell-Off

AI Demand Growth > AI Spend Growth; Summer internships, pay gains, and entry-level jobs; Data Centers make energy cheaper

Investing in Runta

a16z leads Runta's Seed round

Reactors Have a Surprising Amount of Detail

The more difficult your mission, the more the details are critical to understand

Banning AI in Law School: We've Seen This Before

Preemptive regulation is the enemy of progress

You Just Hired a Million Bad Employees

For the first time in history, humans are cheaper than software

The Most Human Technology Ever Made

Most people aren't trying to save time. They're trying to spend it.

The New Rules of Enterprise Software with Steven Sinofsky

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 than systems of engagement. They discuss Salesforce's Headless 360 announcement, MCP, enterprise software architecture, and why AI may fundamentally change how businesses interact with their data. A

Ben Horowitz on the Global Race for Tech, Power, and Influence

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 why countries around the world are looking to adopt frontier technologies while building stronger innovation ecosystems of their own. They discuss AI infrastructure, cybersecurity, defense technology,

America: The Next 250 Years

Accelerating the founders powering our national interest, security, and prosperity for the next 250 years.

Charts of the Summer: Featuring Deel

America | Tech | Opinion | Culture | Charts

The 2026 Summer Reading List

America | Tech | Opinion | Culture | Charts

This is New Media

Meet the a16z Design Engineer Fellows

The 73 fellows we've selected to join the inaugural cohort

Against all odds. Congratulations Elon Musk and SpaceX.

This material is solely for educational purposes and is not investment advice or an offer of investment advisory services. This material should not be used as the basis for an investment decision. a16z is an investor in SpaceX and Cursor through its managed funds, and thus has a financial interest in the company’s performance and future prospects. In particular, a16z benefits if the company grows in value; and a16z funds will receive any customary dividend payments in connection with their status as a shareholder of the company. However, a16z is not being compensated by SpaceX or Cursor for th

Jake Paul on Going From YouTube to Boxing to Investing | a16z ft. Anti Fund

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. They discuss founder psychology, resilience, ambition, and why they believe attention, culture, and distribution are becoming increasingly important advantages in the AI era. Along the way, Jake ref

The New Media Advantage with Ben Horowitz and Marc Andreessen

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, employees, and the public. They discuss podcasts, social media, storytelling, corporate communications, and the changing relationship between companies, journalists, and audiences. Along the way, they

The Economics of AI Usage and What's Next For SaaS | Benedict Evans on a16z

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 emerged as AI's first breakout use case, how previous platform shifts can help frame the current moment, and why many of the most important questions about AI remain unresolved. Along the way, they exp

The New Rule for Picking AI Winners | The a16z Show

David George, General Partner at a16z, and David Clark, CIO at VenCap, discuss how AI is reshaping venture capital and the technology industry itself. They examine why today’s AI companies are scaling faster than any previous generation of startups, and why the eventual outcomes may be significantly larger than most investors currently expect. The conversation covers frontier AI models, coding agents, open source competition, data center constraints, and who ultimately captures value in the AI ecosystem. They also discuss what these shifts mean for venture capital itself, including larger com

Is Defense the Next Trillion-Dollar Category? | a16z American Dynamism Summit

Erin Price-Wright speaks with Michael Duffey and Dino Mavrookas about what it will take to rebuild the American defense industrial base for a new era of competition. As production capacity becomes a central constraint, they outline how the system must shift toward speed, scale, and modern manufacturing. The conversation covers the role of autonomy in both defense systems and industrial processes, and how new approaches to design, labor, and production can dramatically reduce cost and complexity. Mavrookas explains how building for software and autonomy enables entirely new classes of platform