SHOW DIRECTORY
The a16z Show
The venture firm’s view of startups, AI, software, markets, company building, and the technological shifts creating new categories.
BIDCLUB DESCRIPTION
The $1 Trillion Firm That Refuses The Private Equity Label | a16z
Apollo’s slightly-over-$1 trillion platform is 80% investment-grade credit, making origination capacity—not available capital—the binding constraint on growth.Daily estimated valuations for private investment-grade products by June 30 and all credit by the end of September could widen access as $800 billion of 2026 capex from four public companies tests financing capacity.
Goldman Sachs Chairman on Why Finance Adopts AI Differently | a16z
Finance is adopting AI aggressively, but near-zero error tolerance requires proven and experimental systems to run in parallel—sometimes 50 runs with perfection on the last 49—raising costs before efficiency gains.Opaque software executing 70,000 transactions could scale hidden errors and leverage, making testable reliability, regulation, and public legitimacy key adoption constraints for OpenAI, Anthropic, and other systemically important AI companies.
Building Blackstone, Backing Costco, and Working with Munger | Tony James on The a16z Show
Tony James’s compounding playbook paired early S-curve positioning with operating discipline, from DLJ using leveraged buyouts to “buy clients we couldn’t actually win competitively” to Blackstone increasing market value about 170-fold while fund IRRs improved.Costco shows the customer moat in practice—if sourcing saves a nickel, “100% of that nickel gets lower prices”—while James sees a private-credit correction ahead and favors seasoned assets through co-investments and continuation vehicles.
How AI Will Transform Fintech In 2026
Fintech is entering an early-to-mid-spring cycle where survivors are expanding from digital access into cash-flow underwriting, embedded finance, fraud controls, and full-stack products.AI’s clearest institutional opportunity is software that performs compliance, servicing, treasury, and trading work, while consumer agents still face a trust barrier around unexplained money movement.Fraud is growing 18% to 20% annually as AI accelerates adversaries, making Plaid’s cross-network Protect and Lens Score important 2026 catalysts amid unresolved defensive challenges.