The a16z Podcast

In this closing keynote from a16z’s Runtime conference, General Partner Erik Torenberg speaks with our firm’s cofounders, Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz on highlights from throughout the conference, the current state of LLM capabilities, and why despite huge capex, AI is not a bubble. They discuss whether AI can truly create, the nature of human creativity, the intersection of intelligence and leadership, and how emotion, embodiment, and theory of mind shape the next frontier of AI. The conversation also touches on whether we’re in an AI bubble, Google’s wake-up call, new UX paradigms, talent and chip cycles, and the U.S.-China AI race leading into a robotics-driven future. Recorded live at Runtime 2025, this discussion captures the evolving mindset of two of Silicon Valley’s most influential thinkers as they unpack what comes next for artificial intelligence, industry, and society.

In this conversation from a16z’s Runtime, Gavin Baker, Managing Partner and CIO of Atreides Management, joins David George, General Partner at a16z, to unpack the macro view of AI: the trillion-dollar data center buildout, the new economics of GPUs, and what this boom means for investors, founders, and the global economy.

AI isn’t just changing software, it’s causing the biggest buildout of physical infrastructure in modern history. In this episode, live from Runtime, a16z's Raghu Raghuram speaks with Amin Vahdat, VP and GM of AI and Infrastructure at Google, and Jeetu Patel, President and Chief Product Officer at Cisco, about the unprecedented scale of what’s being built, from chips to power grids to global data centers. They discuss the new “AI industrial revolution,” where power, compute, and network are the new scarce resources; how geopolitical competition is shaping chip design and data center placement; and why the next generation of AI infrastructure will demand co-design across hardware, software, and networking. The conversation also covers how enterprises will adapt, why we’re still in the earliest phase of this CapEx supercycle, and how AI inference, reinforcement learning, and multi-site computing will transform how systems are built and run.

Google DeepMind’s new image model Nano Banana took the internet by storm. In this episode, Principal Scientist Oliver Wang and Group Product Manager Nicole Brichtova join the a16z team to discuss how Nano Banana was created, why it went viral, and what it means for the future of image and video generation. They unpack the origin of the project and its playful name, the 'wow' moments during its viral launch, and how artists and users are shaping the next era of creative AI. The conversation explores topics including character consistency, multimodal creativity, and the evolution from 2D to 3D world models. Wang and Brichtova also share how DeepMind is building tools that empower both professional artists and everyday users to design with intent. Recorded for the a16z Podcast, this episode captures the intersection of art, technology, and imagination—and how AI is redefining what it means to see ourselves in creativity.

In this episode of Monitoring the Situation, Marc Andreessen, Katherine Boyle, and Erik Torenberg dive into the movies that best explain America, from Once Upon a Time in Hollywood to Tropic Thunder to Fight Club. They explore how Tarantino’s revisionist masterpiece reimagines 1969 and the end of America’s cultural innocence, why Tropic Thunder was the last un-cancellable comedy, and how Fight Club evolved from a left-wing critique of capitalism to a right-wing prophecy about alienation and identity. Along the way, they trace the parallels between the counterculture of the 1960s and the internet culture wars of the 2010s, and debate whether we’re living through another great American cultural reset.

Amjad Masad, founder and CEO of Replit, joins a16z’s Marc Andreessen and Erik Torenberg to discuss the new world of AI agents, the future of programming, and how software itself is beginning to build software. They trace the history of computing to the rise of AI agents that can now plan, reason, and code for hours without breaking, and explore how Replit is making it possible for anyone to create complex applications in natural language. Amjad explains how RL unlocked reasoning for modern models, why verification loops changed everything, whether LLMs are hitting diminishing returns, and if “good enough” AI might actually block progress toward true general intelligence.

In this episode, a16z's Anish Acharya joins Kevin Rose for an in-depth, fast-paced conversation on the rebirth of consumer technology, and how AI is reshaping what it means to build, invest, and create. They talk about why AI has reignited the consumer renaissance, what it means to build “weird and working” products, and how the next wave of apps will blend emotion, utility, and creativity in entirely new ways. From AI companions and “emotional interfaces” to the tools making it possible to build entire startups solo, Kevin and Anish explore what’s emerging at the edge of culture and code. This is a conversation about the future of creation, where consumer tech meets human feeling, and why the next big ideas will come from people bold enough to be weird.

Augusto Marietti, CEO and cofounder of Kong, has one of the most remarkable founder stories in Silicon Valley history. In this conversation with Martin Casado, Aghi shares how he went from a garage in Milan to building one of the world’s leading API infrastructure companies, surviving years of rejection, living in the U.S. on $1,000 a month, and raising his first $50K while sleeping on Travis Kalanick’s couch. They talk about the near-death moments that defined Kong’s journey, the seven-year grind before breakout success, and how APIs became the “assembly line of software.” Aghi also explains how Kong evolved into the backbone of modern API and AI connectivity, and why the coming wave of AI agents will make APIs more essential than ever.