Ben Horowitz

Ben Horowitz × Martin Casado × Diogo Almeida

Jev targets AI’s missing software layer: a natural-language primitive that joins a state machine and selects actions with confidence, making software itself more capable rather than merely speeding code production.Its economic unlock is reliability—“the same intelligence every time”—which could let incumbent SaaS vendors automate high-return workflows across existing distribution, while state consistency, security, cost, speed, and strong guarantees remain unresolved.

Ben Horowitz × Erik Torenberg × Gagan Biyani

AI is challenging college’s default role in preparing young builders for work, prompting a16z to launch a residential San Francisco academy for at least 50 creators.The model bundles status, community, project-based learning, and access to Databricks, NVIDIA, and Stripe, with student outcomes as its incentive; five-year results will test whether it scales beyond technology.

Ben Horowitz × Erik Torenberg × Greg Brockman

Greg Brockman says Astra is “pretty reasonable to call ...AGI,” with coherent 24-hour runs across domains and a discontinuous jump driven partly by computer use that reduces reliance on purpose-built connectors.OpenAI shifted 25% of production engineers to security, saturated Astra’s identifiable P0s, and committed $1B plus discounted CrowdStrike access, but compute distribution and safety, security, and alignment may become the next binding constraints.

Ben Horowitz × Anne Neuberger × Raghu Raghuram × Jen Kha

AI models are becoming geopolitical infrastructure because their defaults will mediate products while encoding contested histories, ethics, and values, making model choice a question of sovereignty as well as performance.Private AI, autonomy, and cyber vendors now shape allied deterrence, while global APIs expose startups to demand before local distribution exists; anchor customers and trusted relationships can justify $5 million or $10 million market-entry investments.

Alex Rampell × Ben Horowitz

AI is eroding software’s migration, data, and interface moats while compressing product runway from years to “five weeks.”As code becomes replicable and agents flexible, defensibility shifts toward genuinely distinct value, while electricity, memory, manufacturing, and grid equipment become binding constraints.Venture capital could consolidate into bank-like institutions or expand dramatically if AI creates abundant new businesses, leaving its long-term structure unresolved.

Ben Horowitz × Erik Torenberg × Alex Blania

AI agents will force platforms to distinguish humans, authorized agents, and autonomous agents, making privacy-preserving proof of unique humanity a potential internet infrastructure layer.World ID’s iris-based, multi-party computation architecture returns only a uniqueness result, while reported scale of 18 million verified users faces a demanding rollout of roughly 50,000 US Orbs and platform adoption risks.

Patrick O'Shaughnessy × Ben Horowitz

Ben Horowitz expects AI’s economic impact within 12–24 months because adoption needs no new infrastructure, while lower energy prices, less regulation, and a friendlier tax code strengthen the backdrop.AI-native companies such as Cursor can reach over $1B in revenue rapidly even as Salesforce and SAP remain difficult targets, but policy remains the tail risk and private markets must support companies toward a roughly $1B IPO threshold.

David Haber × David Solomon × Ben Horowitz

David Solomon sees one of the strongest macro setups in his “40-odd years” in markets, combining fiscal expansion, rate cuts, deregulation and an unprecedented capital-investment supercycle.Confidence has shifted M&A from “no” to “maybe,” potentially producing the biggest M&A year in history, while Goldman’s $1.9 trillion balance sheet and $500 billion deposit base frame the scale-and-funding challenge; FTC uncertainty and geopolitical risk remain key variables.

Ben Horowitz × Jen

a16z emphasizes world-best capability, small decision-making teams, and vertical theses tied to entrepreneurial density and multibillion-dollar outcomes.AI’s strong adoption and revenue growth support a larger platform opportunity, while application-specific complexity and intense demand complicate a simple bubble thesis.

Erik Torenberg × Marc Andreessen × Ben Horowitz

AI need not match Beethoven to transform productivity: clearing 99.99% of humanity at intelligence and creativity could unlock recombination across domains.Current models already show commercially useful theory of mind in Socratic dialogue and simulated focus groups, though intelligence alone does not confer leadership or human connection.Demand, talent, and chip shortages are attracting supply, while the still-unformed interface and US–China robotics race leave the platform outcome open.