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PODCAST

AI + a16z

Artificial intelligence is changing everything from art to enterprise IT, and a16z is watching all of it with a close eye. This podcast features discussions with leading AI engineers, founders, and experts, as well as our general partners, about where the technology and industry are heading.

technology entrepreneurship

All Episodes

00:47:15

Models, Modalities, and Memes: Creating Compelling AI...

AI + a16z ·

2025/08/14

Models, Modalities, and Memes: Creating Compelling AI CharactersIn this episode of AI + a16z, Hedra founder and CEO Michael Lingelbach joins a16z partners Justine Moore and Matt Bornstein to talk about building AI-native video — and why the next wave of generative content is all about characters, not just clips.They discuss how Hedra’s expressive, full-body, dialogue-centric video models are powering everything from viral meme content to enterprise training tools. Michael explains why “character” is

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00:40:10

Performance and Passion: Fal's Approach to AI Inference

AI + a16z ·

2025/08/01

If you've been experimenting with image, video, and audio models, the chances are you've been both blown away by how good they're becoming, and also a little perturbed by how long they can take to generate. If you've been using a platform like Fal, however, your experience on the latter point might be more positive.In this episode, Fal cofounder and CEO Burkay Gur and head of engineering Batuhan Taskaya join a16z general partner Jennifer Li to discuss how they built an inference platform — or, as

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00:26:35

How to Vibe Code Securely

AI + a16z ·

2025/07/25

In this episode, a16z partner Joel de la Garza sits down with Socket founder and CEO Feross Aboukhadijeh to dive into the intersection of vibe coding and security. As one of the earliest security founders to fully embrace LLMs, Feross shares firsthand insights into how these technologies are transforming software engineering workflows and productivity — and where there are sharp edges that practitioners need to avoid.The TL;DR: Treat AI-assisted programming the same way you'd treat other

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00:42:52

AI Is Upending SaaS Pricing

AI + a16z ·

2025/07/18

In this episode, a16z GP Martin Casado sits down with Metronome CEO Scott Woody to unpack how AI is fundamentally changing the value proposition of software—and why that shift demands a rethink of the traditional SaaS business model.They explore how, in the cloud era, value scaled with the number of users accessing a shared system (think Salesforce). However, in the AI era, value shifts to the work the software performs on your behalf, automating tasks such as writing code or resolving support

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00:45:33

The AI Infrastructure Stack with Jennifer Li

AI + a16z ·

2025/07/11

In this episode, which originally aired on the Complex Systems Podcast, a16z General Partner Jennifer Li discusses how AI is reshaping every layer of the software stack, creating demand for new types of middleware. Jennifer talks about emerging infrastructure categories and why the next wave of valuable companies might be the unsexy infrastructure providers powering tomorrow's intelligent applications.Subscribe to Complex Systems:SpotifyAppleCheck out everything a16z is doing with artificial

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00:46:48

AI's Unsung Hero: Data Labeling and Expert Evals

AI + a16z ·

2025/06/27

Labelbox CEO Manu Sharma joins a16z Infra partner Matt Bornstein to explore the evolution of data labeling and evaluation in AI — from early supervised learning to today’s sophisticated reinforcement learning loops.Manu recounts Labelbox’s origins in computer vision, and then how the shift to foundation models and generative AI changed the game. The value moved from pre-training to post-training and, today, models are trained not just to answer questions, but to assess the quality of their own

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00:35:07

AI, Data Engineering, and the Modern Data Stack

AI + a16z ·

2025/06/20

In this episode of AI + a16z, dbt Labs co-founder and CEO Tristan Handy sits down with a16z's Jennifer Li and Matt Bornstein to explore the next chapter of data engineering — from the rise (and plateau) of the modern data stack to the growing role of AI in analytics and data engineering. As they sum up the impact of AI on data workflows: The interesting question here is human-in-the-loop versus human-not-in-the-loop. AI isn’t about replacing analysts — it’s about enabling self-service across the

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00:26:02

Enabling Agents and Battling Bots on an AI-Centric Web

AI + a16z ·

2025/06/13

Arcjet CEO David Mytton sits down with a16z partner Joel de la Garza to discuss the increasing complexity of managing who can access websites, and other web apps, and what they can do there. A primary challenge is determining whether automated traffic is coming from bad actors and troublesome bots, or perhaps AI agents trying to buy a product on behalf of a real customer.Joel and David dive into the challenge of analyzing every request without adding latency, and how faster inference at the edge

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00:35:49

Giving New Life to Unstructured Data with LLMs and...

AI + a16z ·

2025/06/06

Instabase founder and CEO Anant Bhardwaj joins a16z Infra partner Guido Appenzeller to discuss the revolutionary impact of LLMs on analyzing unstructured data and documents (like letting banks verify identity and approve loans via WhatsApp) and shares his vision for how AI agents could take things even further (by automating actions based on those documents). In more detail, they discuss:Why legacy robotic process automation (RPA) struggles with unstructured inputs.How Instabase developed

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01:41:43

Beyond Leaderboards: LMArena’s Mission to Make AI...

AI + a16z ·

2025/05/30

LMArena cofounders Anastasios N. Angelopoulos, Wei-Lin Chiang, and Ion Stoica sit down with a16z general partner Anjney Midha to talk about the future of AI evaluation. As benchmarks struggle to keep up with the pace of real-world deployment, LMArena is reframing the problem: what if the best way to test AI models is to put them in front of millions of users and let them vote? The team discusses how Arena evolved from a research side project into a key part of the AI stack, why fresh and subjective

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00:47:40

Building AI Systems You Can Trust

AI + a16z ·

2025/05/23

In this episode of AI + a16z, Distributional cofounder and CEO Scott Clark, and a16z partner Matt Bornstein, explore why building trust in AI systems matters more than just optimizing performance metrics. From understanding the hidden complexities of generative AI behavior to addressing the challenges of reliability and consistency, they discuss how to confidently deploy AI in production. Why is trust becoming a critical factor in enterprise AI adoption? How do traditional performance metrics fail

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00:44:30

Who's Coding Now? AI and the Future of Software...

AI + a16z ·

2025/05/16

In this episode of the a16z AI podcast, a16z Infra partners Guido Appenzeller, Matt Bornstein, and Yoko Li explore how generative AI is reshaping software development. From its potential as a new high-level programming abstraction to its current practical impacts, they discuss whether AI coding tools will redefine what it means to be a developer.Why has coding emerged as one of AI's most powerful use cases? How much can AI truly boost developer productivity, and will it fundamentally change

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00:53:39

MCP Co-Creator on the Next Wave of LLM Innovation

AI + a16z ·

2025/05/02

In this episode of AI + a16z, Anthropic's David Soria Parra — who created MCP (Model Context Protocol) along with Justin Spahr-Summers — sits down with a16z's Yoko Li to discuss the project's inception, exciting use cases for connecting LLMs to external sources, and what's coming next for the project. If you're unfamiliar with the wildly popular MCP project, this edited passage from their discussion is a great starting point to learn:David: "MCP tries to enable building AI applications in such a way

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00:36:26

What Is an AI Agent?

AI + a16z ·

2025/04/28

In this episode of AI + a16z, a16z Infra partners Guido Appenzeller, Matt Bornstein, and Yoko Li discuss and debate one of the tech industry's buzziest words right now: AI agents. The trio digs into the topic from a number of angles, including:Whether a uniform definition of agent actually existsHow to distinguish between agents, LLMs, and functionsHow to think about pricing agentsWhether agents can actually replace humans, andThe effects of data siloes on agents that can access the web.They don't

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00:33:28

Benchmarking AI Agents on Full-Stack Coding

AI + a16z ·

2025/03/28

In this episode, a16z General Partner Martin Casado sits down with Sujay Jayakar, co-founder and Chief Scientist at Convex, to talk about his team’s latest work benchmarking AI agents on full-stack coding tasks. From designing Fullstack Bench to the quirks of agent behavior, the two dig into what’s actually hard about autonomous software development, and why robust evals—and guardrails like type safety—matter more than ever. They also get tactical: which models perform best for real-world app

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00:44:39

Automating Developer Email with MCP and Al Agents

AI + a16z ·

2025/03/21

In this episode of AI + a16z, Resend founder and CEO Zeno Rocha sits down with a16z partner Yoko Li to discuss:How generative AI — powered by agents and, now, MCP — is reshaping the email experience for developers, as well as the overall world of programming. Zeno's obsession with developer experience has evolved into designing for "agent experience" — a new frontier where LLM-powered agents are not only building products but also operating within them. How email, one of the most ubiquitous tools

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00:26:31

The Future of Digital Workers

AI + a16z ·

2025/03/20

In this episode of AI + a16z, a16z Partner Joe Schmidt sits down with 11x CTO Prabhav Jain for an inside look at how AI-powered digital workers are reshaping sales and revenue operations. They discuss the evolution of agentic AI, the trade-offs between orchestration and autonomy, and the technical innovations driving 11x’s products, Alice and Mike.Prabhav breaks down the challenges of real-time voice AI, the complexities of multimodal agent interactions, and why the future of enterprise AI is about

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01:41:37

Building the Next Generation of Conversational AI

AI + a16z ·

2025/03/14

In this episode of AI + a16z, Sesame Cofounder and CTO Ankit Kumar joins a16z general partner Anjney Midha for a deep dive into the research and engineering behind their voice technology. They discuss the technical challenges of real-time speech generation, the trade-offs in balancing personality with efficiency, and why the team is open-sourcing key components of their model. Ankit breaks down the complexities of multimodal AI, full-duplex conversation modeling, and the computational optimizations

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00:40:55

Agent Experience: Building an Open Web for the AI Era

AI + a16z ·

2025/03/07

In this episode of AI + a16z, Netlify CEO and Cofounder Matt Biilmann joins a16z General Partner Martin Casado to explore how AI is reshaping web development — not just through faster code generation, but by fundamentally shifting how we think about building for the web. At the center of this shift is Agent Experience (AX), a new paradigm where AI agents aren’t just tools, but active participants in development, shaping both the creative process and the underlying infrastructure.Matt shares how

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00:52:13

What DeepSeek Means for Cybersecurity

AI + a16z ·

2025/02/28

In this episode of AI + a16z, a trio of security experts join a16z partner Joel de la Garza to discuss the security implications of the DeepSeek reasoning model that made waves recently. It's three separate discussions, focusing on different aspects of DeepSeek and the fast-moving world of generative AI.The first segment, with Ian Webster of Promptfoo, focuses on vulnerabilities within DeepSeek itself, and how users can protect themselves against backdoors, jailbreaks, and censorship. The second

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75 results

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