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Monitoring the Situation #2: Alana Newhouse
From 🇺🇸 a16z Podcast, published at 2025-10-05 18:10
Two trends in media have been abundantly clear since 2020: legacy media is dying, and independent media is rising. a16z General Partners Erik Torenberg and Katherine Boyle sit down with Tablet founder and editor-in-chief Alana Newhouse to discuss the great media realignment, why real institutions will outlast the new “internet pirates", Alana’s deeply personal case for gene editing, and how faith, science, and community can coexist without giving in to government referees.
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Software is Eating Labor
From 🇺🇸 a16z Podcast, published at 2025-10-03 10:00
Software has fundamentally changed the way we record, store, and share information. Its next act is to fundamentally change the nature of our economy, capturing trillions of dollars of value in the process. In this talk from the 2025 a16z LP Summit, a16z General Partner Alex Rampell discusses the history of filing cabinets and databases, how SaaS pricing moved from seats to outcomes, and how AI agents will accelerate the trend of the last 70 years of software progress.
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The Ben & Marc Show: China Has Scale. Can America Catch Up?
From 🇺🇸 a16z Podcast, published at 2025-10-02 16:43
Ben, Marc, and Erik Torenberg are joined by Brian Schimpf, Cofounder & CEO of Anduril, and Chris Power, Founder & CEO of Hadrian. Together, they dig into America’s defense production gap: why the U.S. can out-innovate but not out-produce—and what it will take to turn that around. They discuss why U.S. war games show we run out of munitions in a week, the myth of “exquisite-only” systems, how to rebuild industrial capacity with software-led automation, financing factories like data centers, and what it takes to create real deterrence in a Taiwan scenario.
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Cheeky Pint: Marc Andreessen, John Collison & Charlie Songhurst on Tech’s Big Questions
From 🇺🇸 a16z Podcast, published at 2025-10-01 10:00
Today we’re sharing a feed drop from Cheeky Pint, where Stripe cofounder and president John Collison chats with legends in technology over a pint of Guinness. In this episode, John is joined by a16z cofounder Marc Andreessen and tech investor Charlie Songhurst for a candid conversation about bubbles, downturns, and the psychology of markets. They discuss what makes Silicon Valley so hard to replace, the deep history of the Valley’s ecosystem, and the future of media. From the lessons of the dot-com crash to the future of venture capital and startups, this is an inside look at how big cycles shape innovation and what it takes to build on the frontier.
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Building an AI Physicist: ChatGPT Co-Creator’s Next Venture
From 🇺🇸 a16z Podcast, published at 2025-09-30 17:00
Scaling laws took us from GPT-1 to GPT-5 Pro. But in order to crack physics, we’ll need a different approach. In this episode, a16z General Partner Anjney Midha talks to Liam Fedus, former VP of post-training research and co-creator of ChatGPT at OpenAI, and Ekin Dogus Cubuk, former head of materials science and chemistry research at Google DeepMind, on their new startup Periodic Labs and their plan to automate discovery in the hard sciences.
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Meta CMO: How Advertising Works Under the Hood
From 🇺🇸 a16z Podcast, published at 2025-09-29 10:00
Ads pay for the internet—and they’re about to change again. a16z General Partner Erik Torenberg, entrepreneur and author Antonio García Martínez, and Meta CMO Alex Schultz dive into growth and performance marketing, privacy myths, retail media, and the AI future of “audience-of-one” advertising—plus Instagram what-ifs, WhatsApp as a super-app, and how Meta’s feed shifted from social graphs to AI-ranked content.
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The Common Thread of All Technology: Monitoring the Situation, Ep.1
From 🇺🇸 a16z Podcast, published at 2025-09-27 10:00
Announcing our new show, Monitoring the Situation, hosted by a16z General Partners Erik Torenberg and Katherine Boyle, with guest Eddie Lazzarin, CTO of a16z crypto. In this first episode, we ask how American Dynamism, consumer, games, and crypto all fit together, from Palmer/Oculus to Marc Andreessen’s Techno-Optimist Manifesto, while also exploring crypto × AD values, parenting in the AI era, and how internet subcultures shape the news.
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From Vibe Coding to Vibe Researching: OpenAI’s Mark Chen and Jakub Pachocki
From 🇺🇸 a16z Podcast, published at 2025-09-25 10:00
What comes after vibe coding? Maybe vibe researching. OpenAI’s Chief Scientist, Jakub Pachocki, and Chief Research Officer, Mark Chen, join a16z general partners Anjney Midha and Sarah Wang to go deep on GPT-5—how they fused fast replies with long-horizon reasoning, how they measure progress once benchmarks saturate, and why reinforcement learning keeps surprising skeptics. They explore agentic systems (and their stability tradeoffs), coding models that change how software gets made, and the bigger bet: an automated researcher that can generate new ideas with real economic impact. Plus: how they prioritize compute, hire “cave-dweller” talent, protect fundamental research inside a product company, and keep pace without chasing every shiny demo.
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Software finally eats services - Aaron Levie
From 🇺🇸 a16z Podcast, published at 2025-09-24 14:27
Should the US put a price on H-1B visas, or would that block the flow of new talent? Are AI coding agents actually making teams way more productive, or is it just hype? And in the AI platform shift, will the big winners be incumbents or new AI-native startups? Erik Torenberg is joined by Box co-founder and CEO Aaron Levie, a16z board partner Steven Sinofsky, and a16z general partner Martin Casado to debate the biggest questions in tech. They unpack pricing vs lottery for H-1Bs and what we’re actually optimizing for, why Box now ships a third of its code from AI, the shift from writing to reviewing code, and why bottom-up personal AI tools succeed where top-down “AI pilots” struggle.
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America's Autism Crisis and How AI Can Fix Science with NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya
From 🇺🇸 a16z Podcast, published at 2025-09-23 16:35
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya is one of the country’s top medical experts and a 24-year professor of medicine at Stanford. After being censored and deplatformed during COVID for his role in opposing harsh lockdowns, he was appointed Director of the National Institutes of Health by President Trump in 2025. a16z General Partners Erik Torenberg, Vineeta Agarwala, and Jorge Conde join Dr. Bhattacharya to discuss the administration’s role in tackling the autism crisis, how to restore public trust in health authorities, how to make the NIH more dynamic and efficient, and how to streamline publishing and restore academic freedom.
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Dylan Patel on the AI Chip Race - NVIDIA, Intel & the US Government vs. China
From 🇺🇸 a16z Podcast, published at 2025-09-22 10:00
Nvidia’s $5 billion investment in Intel is one of the biggest surprises in semiconductors in years. Two longtime rivals are now teaming up, and the ripple effects could reshape AI, cloud, and the global chip race. To make sense of it all, Erik Torenberg is joined by Dylan Patel, chief analyst at SemiAnalysis, joins Sarah Wang, general partner at a16z, and Guido Appenzeller, a16z partner and former CTO of Intel’s Data Center and AI business unit. Together, they dig into what the deal means for Nvidia, Intel, AMD, ARM, and Huawei; the state of US-China tech bans; Nvidia’s moat and Jensen Huang’s leadership; and the future of GPUs, mega data centers, and AI infrastructure.
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Charlie Kirk and the Rise of Political Violence
From 🇺🇸 a16z Podcast, published at 2025-09-21 10:00
In this episode of Honestly with Bari Weiss, we share a special conversation featuring a16z general partner Katherine Boyle in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s shocking assassination. Katherine reflects on what courage means in a culture where words and debate are increasingly met with violence. Drawing on faith, history, and her own response to recent tragedies, she discusses the idea of martyrdom, not only in its most extreme sense, but also in the small, everyday choices to speak the truth despite risk.
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The Death of Search: How Shopping Will Work In The Age of AI
From 🇺🇸 a16z Podcast, published at 2025-09-17 10:00
The web is unhealthy, and AI agents are about to rewrite how we shop. In this episode, a16z General Partner Alex Rampell and Partner Justine Moore explore how AI agents will change commerce and the implications for Google’s business model, affiliate marketing, online shopping, and more.
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How OpenAI Built Its Coding Agent
From 🇺🇸 a16z Podcast, published at 2025-09-16 10:00
OpenAI’s Codex has already shipped hundreds of thousands of pull requests in its first months. But what is it really, and how will coding agents change the future of software?
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Faster Science, Better Drugs
From 🇺🇸 a16z Podcast, published at 2025-09-15 10:00
Can we make science as fast as software? In this episode, Erik Torenberg talks with Patrick Hsu (cofounder of Arc Institute) and a16z general partner Jorge Conde about Arc’s “virtual cells” moonshot, which uses foundation models to simulate biology and guide experiments.
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Ben Horowitz: Why Hesitation is a CEO’s Worst Enemy
From 🇺🇸 a16z Podcast, published at 2025-09-12 10:00
In this conversation from Lenny’s Podcast, Ben Horowitz joins Lenny to discuss the psychological muscle every founder needs, why hesitation can be fatal for CEOs, when it’s time to replace a founder, and how to normalize failure while building confidence. They also explore the Databricks founding story, investing in Adam Neumann after WeWork, whether AI is in a bubble, where the real opportunities lie, and Ben’s work with the Paid in Full Foundation supporting hip-hop pioneers. The result is a candid look at leadership, product management, and what it takes to build enduring companies.
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Inside the $13T Mortgage Machine
From 🇺🇸 a16z Podcast, published at 2025-09-11 10:00
The $13T U.S. mortgage market serves 50M homeowners but still runs on decades-old software. In this episode, a16z GP Angela Strange hosts Tim Mayopoulos (ex-CEO of Fannie Mae and ex-president of Blend), Mike Yu (co-founder and CEO of Vesta), and Andrew Wang (co-founder and CEO of Valon) to unpack why standardization and regulation slow change, and how modern loan-origination and servicing platforms, cleaner data, and AI can cut costs, boost transparency, and reduce errors. They also discuss policy levers that could speed innovation and what a true one-tap mortgage could look like.
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Chris Dixon on How to Build Networks, Movements, and AI-Native Products
From 🇺🇸 a16z Podcast, published at 2025-09-10 10:00
Why do some consumer products explode into networks that reshape the internet, while others fade away? Today on the podcast, a16z general partners Anish Acharya and Chris Dixon take on that question. Anish invests in AI-native consumer products and the next wave of consumer tech. Chris is best known for his work in Web3 and network economies, and he’s also led some of a16z’s biggest consumer bets. Together, they cover the history and power of consumer networks, the exponential forces that shape how they grow, and what it all means for founders building in the age of AI.
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Mark Cuban on the NBA, Cost Plus Drugs, and How to Fix Politics
From 🇺🇸 a16z Podcast, published at 2025-09-09 10:00
What happens when AI collides with salesmanship, streaming-era sports, and healthcare? In this episode, Erik Torenberg is joined by Mark Cuban, entrepreneur, Dallas Mavericks co-owner, and founder of Cost Plus Drugs. Topics include fiery group chats and how dissent sharpens thinking, the sales playbook of modern politics, and concrete fixes for U.S. healthcare like ending PBM opacity, publishing real prices, and government-backed patient financing. Mark also explains how AI is pushing media from “social” to algorithmic, why he expects millions of models, and why ESOPs are an underrated wealth engine. He shares what he’d build today and weighs in on NBA economics under the new collective bargaining agreement.
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The Little Tech Agenda for AI
From 🇺🇸 a16z Podcast, published at 2025-09-08 10:00
Who’s speaking up for startups in Washington, D.C.? In this episode, Matt Perault (Head of AI Policy, a16z) and Collin McCune (Head of Government Affairs, a16z) unpack the “Little Tech Agenda” for AI- why AI rules should regulate harmful use, not model development; how to keep open source open; the roles of the federal government vs states in regulating AI; and how the U.S. can compete globally without shutting out new founders.