Podcast: a16z

Housing and healthcare make up nearly half of household spending, yet both sectors are riddled with inefficiency and rising costs.

In this episode, Erik Torenberg is joined by a16z Growth partner Alex Immerman and Minna Song and Tony Stoyanov, cofounders of EliseAI, to discuss why they’re tackling these critical industries and how AI can transform everything from leasing and maintenance to patient scheduling and compliance.

The conversation covers:
Why the U.S. is 5 million housing units short — and how technology can help unlock existing supply
How automation can cut waste, reduce labor costs, and improve affordability
What fully autonomous buildings might look like, and how that model could extend to healthcare

This is about the costs that touch every household, and the role AI might play in finally bringing them down.

Do tariffs help rebuild American manufacturing or hold it back?

In this episode, American Compass founder and chief economist Oren Cass sits down with commentator and author Noah Smith and a16z General Partner Erik Torenberg for a lively debate on the future of U.S. industry.

They discuss the case for tariff-driven re-industrialization versus free-market approaches, the role of allies in trade policy, and what the numbers really show about manufacturing jobs, investment, and output. Along the way, they challenge each other’s assumptions and explore what it would take to actually bring more production back to American soil.

The AI hardware race is heating up, and NVIDIA is still far ahead. What will it take to close the gap?

In this episode, Dylan Patel (Founder & CEO, SemiAnalysis) joins Erin Price-Wright (General Partner, a16z), Guido Appenzeller (Partner, a16z), and host Erik Torenberg to break down the state of AI chips, data centers, and infrastructure strategy.

We discuss:
- Why simply copying NVIDIA won’t work, and what it takes to beat them
- How custom silicon from Google, Amazon, and Meta could reshape the market
- The economics of AI model launches and the shift toward cost efficiency
- Infrastructure bottlenecks: power, cooling, and the global supply chain
- The rise of AI silicon startups and the challenges they face
- Export controls, China’s AI ambitions, and geopolitics in the chip race
- Big tech’s next moves: advice for leaders like Jensen Huang, Sundar Pichai, Mark Zuckerberg, and Elon Musk

Genie 3 can generate fully interactive, persistent worlds from just text, in real time.

In this episode, Google DeepMind’s Jack Parker-Holder (Research Scientist) and Shlomi Fruchter (Research Director) join Anjney Midha, Marco Mascorro, and Justine Moore of a16z, with host Erik Torenberg, to discuss how they built it, the breakthrough “special memory” feature, and the future of AI-powered gaming, robotics, and world models.

They share:
-How Genie 3 generates interactive environments in real time
-Why its “special memory” feature is such a breakthrough
-The evolution of generative models and emergent behaviors
-Instruction following, text adherence, and model comparisons
-Potential applications in gaming, robotics, simulation, and more
-What’s next: Genie 4, Genie 5, and the future of world models

This conversation offers a first-hand look at one of the most advanced world models ever created.

a16z General Partners Martin Casado and Anjney Midha join Erik Torenberg to unpack one of the most dramatic shifts in tech policy in recent memory: the move from “pause AI” to “win the AI race.”

They trace the evolution of U.S. AI policy—from executive orders that chilled innovation, to the recent AI Action Plan that puts scientific progress and open source at the center. The discussion covers how technologists were caught off guard, why open source was wrongly equated to nuclear risk, and what changed the narrative—including China's rapid progress.

The conversation also explores:
- How and why the AI discourse got captured by doomerism
- What “marginal risk” really means—and why it matters
- Why open source AI is not just ideology, but business strategy
- How government, academia, and industry are realigning after a fractured few years
- The effect of bad legislation—and what comes next

Whether you're a founder, policymaker, or just trying to make sense of AI's regulatory future, this episode breaks it all down.

We’re sharing an episode from ChinaTalk that dives into one of the biggest recent reversals in U.S. tech policy.

The U.S. banned Nvidia’s H20 AI chips to China in April. Now, just months later, they’re being sold—with a 15% export fee. What happened? Why the reversal? And what does it mean for the future of AI competition between the U.S. and China?

Chris Miller—author of Chip War—and Lennart Heim from RAND join ChinaTalk host Jordan Schneider to unpack the policy flip-flop, why China is publicly downplaying interest in the H20, and why high-bandwidth memory and semiconductor manufacturing tools may be even more important than the Nvidia chips themselves.

Fresh off the announcement of his move from Shopify to a16z, Alex Danco joins TBPN to talk about the “trade deal” that brought him here and his mission to make the firm’s written content truly world class.

He discusses why he believes writing still matters in the age of AI, how great prose can act as “power transfer technology” for founders, and why he’s betting on the overlooked art of speechwriting. Alex also reflects on his years as a founder, investor, and longtime blogger, and shares the formats he’s most excited to explore, from deal memos to launch speeches.

a16z partners Olivia and Justine Moore unpack the latest in consumer AI including:

- Grok’s “Imagine” and its instant, social-first creative tools
- Google’s Genie 3 and the future of 3D worlds
- GPT-5: what’s new, what’s missing, and why some want their old chatbot back
- AI-generated music from ElevenLabs
- Olivia’s vibecoded Jensen Huang selfie app

There’s been a wave of M&A deals lately - Meta and Scale, Windsurf and Google - and a lot of it points to something bigger: how regulation, capital, and innovation are colliding in 2025.

In this episode Erik Torenberg brings together Steven Sinofsky, former Microsoft Executive and Balaji Srinivasan, founder of the Network School, and author of the Network State to break it all down.

From acquihires to “acquifires,” from FTC crackdowns to the deeper battle between the state and the network, this is a sharp conversation on the future of tech and power.

ChatGPT-5 just launched, marking a major milestone for OpenAI and the entire AI ecosystem.

Fresh off the live stream, Erik Torenberg was joined in the studio by three people who played key roles in making this model a reality:

- Christina Kim, Researcher at OpenAI, who leads the core models team on post-training
- Isa Fulford, Researcher at OpenAI, who leads deep research and the ChatGPT agent team on post-training
- Sarah Wang, General Partner at a16z, who’s led our investment in OpenAI since 2021

They discuss what’s actually new in ChatGPT-5—from major leaps in reasoning, coding, and creative writing to meaningful improvements in trustworthiness, behavior, and post-training techniques.

Marc Andreessen joins TBPN for an unfiltered conversation spanning everything from ads in LLMs to why Apple’s AI strategy may be risky for anyone not named Apple.

Marc breaks down the current state of AI: why open source is resurging, how foundational research is (or isn’t) turning into product, and whether we’ve hit the moment when phones start to fade as dominant platforms. He also shares his candid thoughts on Meta’s wearable wins, Vision Pro’s imperfections, and how humor and deep research are his two favorite use cases for AI today.

What happens when a startup becomes a giant—and then has to reinvent itself all over again?

In this episode, Martin Casado sits down with Raghu Raghuram (former CEO of VMware) and Jeetu Patel (President and CPO at Cisco) for a deep, tactical conversation on scaling, disruption, and navigating transformation from the inside. They share hard-won lessons from leading two of the most iconic infrastructure companies in tech—through waves like virtualization, cloud, containers, and now AI.

They cover:
-How to keep innovation alive inside large companies
-Why the best companies operate with a founder’s mindset, even without founders
-The difference between selling to buyers vs. practitioners
-Why the story is the strategy, and how to tell it at scale
-How Cisco is rebuilding its startup DNA in the age of AI

If you're building or leading through a major tech wave, this episode is a playbook.

In this episode, Erik Torenberg is joined in the studio by Dwarkesh Patel and Noah Smith to explore one of the biggest questions in tech: what exactly is artificial general intelligence (AGI), and how close are we to achieving it?

They break down:
-Competing definitions of AGI — economic vs. cognitive vs. “godlike”
-Why reasoning alone isn’t enough — and what capabilities models still lack
-The debate over substitution vs. complementarity between AI and human labor
-What an AI-saturated economy might look like — from growth projections to UBI, sovereign wealth funds, and galaxy-colonizing robots
-How AGI could reshape global power, geopolitics, and the future of work

Along the way, they tackle failed predictions, surprising AI limitations, and the philosophical and economic consequences of building machines that think, and perhaps one day, act, like us.

What really caused the breakdown between tech and media—and what comes next?

Erik Torenberg sits down with Balaji Srinivasan (entrepreneur, investor, and author of The Network State) to explore the long-building conflict between Silicon Valley and legacy journalism. Balaji explains how the collapse of traditional media business models gave rise to political capture, clickbait, and adversarial coverage of the tech industry.

They discuss why “going direct” is no longer optional, how tech became the villain in establishment narratives, and what it would take to build a new truth infrastructure - from decentralized content creation to cryptographic verification.

This episode covers power, distribution, and the future of media, with a signature mix of historical insight, social analysis, and Balaji’s forward-looking frameworks.

What happens when AI starts generating content for everyone—and no one wants to watch it?

In this episode, MSNBC’s Chris Hayes and ad tech veteran Antonio García Martínez join a16z General Partner, Erik Torenberg to unpack the shifting economics of attention: from the rise of “AI slop” and spammy feeds to the difference between what we want to pay attention to and what platforms push on us.

They explore:
-How AI changes what gets created and what gets seen
-Why internet ads still mostly suck
-The return of group chats—and the slow death of mass culture

Based on Chris’s new book The Sirens Call, this is a candid look at what AI might amplify or break in our online lives.

a16z General Partners Erik Torenberg and Martin Casado sit down with technologist and investor Balaji Srinivasan to explore how the metaphors we use to describe AI—whether as god, swarm, tool, or oracle—reveal as much about us as they do about the technology itself.

Balaji, best known for his work in crypto and network states, also brings a deep background in machine learning. Together, the trio unpacks the evolution of AI discourse, from monotheistic visions of a singular AGI to polytheistic interpretations shaped by culture and context. They debate the practical and philosophical: the current limits of AI, why prompts function like high-dimensional programs, and what it really takes to “close the loop” in AI reasoning.

This is a systems-level conversation on belief, control, infrastructure, and the architectures that might govern future societies.

On this episode of The Ben & Marc Show, a16z co-founders Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz sit down with Erik Torenberg— General Partner at a16z and founder of the media company Turpentine—to unpack how the internet shattered the old media order and reshaped the way power works in America.

What begins as a look at the evolution of media quickly becomes something bigger: a conversation about truth, trust, and the collapse of institutional authority. They explore how social media became both an x-ray and an engine, why authenticity now beats polish, and how the rules of politics, and journalism, have permanently changed.

Together, they break down:
-Why 2017 marked a structural break between tech and the press
-Trump’s real training ground
-The tension between objectivity, activism, and “speaking truth to power”
-Why podcasters. not pundits, are setting the agenda
-How the barbell strategy is reshaping media: short-form virality meets long-form depth

With stops at Watergate, the rise of Rogan, the fall of legacy gatekeepers, and the media playbooks behind Obama, Trump, and the Kardashians—this episode explores how we got here, what’s next, and what it means for founders, voters, and anyone trying to build (or tell) a story.

It can take more than 15 years to permit and build a new mine in the United States - yet nearly every modern technology we rely on, from smartphones to fighter jets to AI data centers, depends on a steady supply of critical minerals.

In this episode, Erik Torenberg is joined in the studio by Turner Caldwell, founder of Mariana Minerals, along with American Dynamism general partner Erin Price-Wright and partner Ryan McEntush.

Turner spent nearly a decade at Tesla, working his way upstream from factory design to battery materials and mining. Now, he’s building a new kind of mining and refining company - vertically integrated and software-first- designed to meet the demands of our industrial future.

We get into why the industry is so broken, what it actually takes to turn rocks into usable materials, and how the U.S. can rebuild its capacity to mine, refine, and manufacture the things that matter most.

Is AI the Fourth Pillar of Infrastructure?

Infrastructure doesn’t go away — it layers. And today, AI is emerging as a new foundational layer alongside compute, storage, and networking.

Erik Torenberg interviews a16z’s Martin Casado, Jennifer Li, and Matt Bornstein breaking down how infrastructure is evolving in the age of AI — from models and agents to developer tools and shifting user behavior.

We dive into what infra actually means today, how it differs from enterprise, and why software itself is being disrupted. Plus, we explore the rise of technical users as buyers, what makes infra companies defensible, and how past waves — from the cloud to COVID to AI — are reshaping how we build and invest.

Today we’re sharing an episode from American Optimist featuring Marc Andreessen in conversation with Joe Lonsdale, recorded live at the inaugural Ronald Reagan Economic Forum.

They explore one of the most urgent and complex questions of our time: Can AI and robotics catalyze a new era of American industrial strength—and how do we ensure the entire country, including rural communities, shares in the upside?

Marc walks through the history of U.S. industrialization, the lessons of tariffs and trade from leaders like McKinley, and how America’s shift to a services-based economy helped fuel our current urban-rural divide. The conversation spans immigration policy, housing, education, energy, and the path to a true AI-powered manufacturing revival—touching on what needs to change and how.

This episode is a must-listen for anyone thinking about the future of American productivity, growth, and leadership in the age of AI.