AI coding has emerged as a major market for AI: one that’s already rewriting how software gets built.

a16z Infra Partners Yoko Li and Guido Appenzeller break down how “agents with environments” are changing the dev loop; why repos and PRs may need new abstractions; and where ROI is showing up first (like legacy code migration). We also cover token economics for engineering teams, the emerging agent toolbox (sandboxes, code search/parsing, agent-optimized docs, orchestration), and founder opportunities when you treat agents as users, not just tools.

Read the blog post here.

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What if the hardest part of building a company isn’t the product, but knowing exactly who it’s for?

In this episode, a16z General Partner Martin Casado sits down with Abhishek Agrawal, Cofounder and CEO of Material Security, to discuss how an ideal customer profile is discovered, how to manage any kind of customer, and how frothy markets can distort real signal.

Follow Martin on X: https://x.com/martin_casado

Follow Material Security on X: https://x.com/material_sec

Follow Abhishek on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/abhishek--agrawal/

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AI is transforming both sides of the cybersecurity cat-and-mouse game. Attackers are using LLMs to scale impersonation, phishing, and even deepfake fraud—while defenders are racing to automate detection and takedowns at the same speed.

In this episode, a16z partner Joel de la Garza talks with Kevin Tian, cofounder & CEO of Doppel Security (and former Uber engineer), about building in this new landscape. They cover:

• Why outsider founders sometimes build the most effective security companies
• The “3 V’s” framework for today’s social engineering attacks: volume, velocity, variety
• How Doppel uses reasoning models and reinforcement fine-tuning to cut false positives and improve precision
• Simulation tools like “vibe phishing” to train employees on real attacker tactics
• The shift from manual cyber-intelligence services to AI-driven, software-margin businesses
• Why the biggest bottleneck now isn’t model cost—but engineering time to deliver the right context

If you’re building security products or exploring how AI can automate tough edge cases, this is a ground-level look at what’s working—and what comes next.

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What if you could retake your favorite memories years after they happened, fixing the lighting, catching the smile, or even opening your eyes?

In this conversation, a16z General Partner Martin Casado and Partner Yoko Li sit down with scientist and Lytro founder Ren Ng along with Phota Labs cofounders Cecilia Zhang and Zhihao “Zach” Xia to explore the past, present, and future of computational photography. 

They trace the story from the invention of light-field cameras and the evolution of smartphone photography to today’s AI powered retakes that preserve identity and context in ways filters never could. Together they reflect on how AI is changing what it means to capture a moment, why authenticity matters as much as aesthetics, and how the future of photography may no longer depend on a lens at all but on models that know you.

Resources: 

Find Cecilia on GitHub: https://ceciliavision.github.io/

Find Zach on GitHub: https://likesum.github.io/

Find Ren on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/renng

Find Yoko on X: https://x.com/stuffyokodraws

Find Martin on X: https://x.com/martin_casado

Timecodes:

00:00 The Decisive Moment in Photography

00:33 Introduction to Computational Photography

01:05 Personal Histories and Connections

02:27 Evolution of Computational Photography

04:15 The Birth of Light Field Photography

07:28 From Hardware to Software Innovations

08:52 Founding of Photo Labs

11:10 Generative AI in Photography

13:54 The Future of Photography

14:47 Personalized Visual Gen AI

16:27 User Reactions and Real-World Applications

17:44 Technical Innovations and Challenges

24:11 New Use Cases and Exciting Prospects

25:34 The Essence of Slide Photography

26:16 The Future of Photography: Generative AI

28:58 Authenticity in Photography

32:11 Generative AI and User Behavior

34:39 The Impact of Generative AI on Photography

37:02 The Evolution of Photography Styles

46:20 The Future of Computational Photography

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OpenAI’s Codex has already shipped hundreds of thousands of pull requests in its first month. But what is it really, and how will coding agents change the future of software?

In this episode, General Partner Anjney Midha goes behind the scenes with one of Codex’s product leads- Alexander Embiricos - to unpack its origin story, why its PR success rate is so high, the safety challenges of autonomous agents, and what this all means for developers, students, and the future of coding.

Resources: 

Find Alex on X: https://x.com/embirico

Find Anjney on X: https://twitter.com/AnjneyMidha

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Models, Modalities, and Memes: Creating Compelling AI Characters
In 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 the core design primitive in Hedra’s architecture, how consumers are leading the charge in discovering new use cases, and what it takes to productionize those behaviors for real-world applications.
Along the way, they explore what makes multi-modal generation uniquely hard, the role of user control in shaping believable AI performances, and why being a founder sometimes means responding to thousands of support emails — at 6 a.m.

Key takeaways:

• How Hedra’s real-time video model blends audio, image, and character control
• Why generative content is shifting from static avatars to programmable personas
• The surprising crossover between consumer creativity and enterprise adoption
• Where existing LLMs fall short in generating emotionally authentic characters
• What vibe coding, hands-on design, and founder obsession look like in practice

For anyone curious about building AI characters, scaling creative workflows, or the future of human-computer interaction — this one’s not to be missed.

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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 they call it, a generative media cloud — that's optimized for speed, performance, and user experience. These are core features for a great product, yes, and also ones borne of necessity as the early team obsessively engineered around its meager GPU capacity at the height of the AI infrastructure crunch.

But this is more than a story about infrastructure. As you'll hear, they also delve into sales and hiring strategy; the team's overall excitement over these emerging modalities; and the trends they're seeing as competition in the world of video models, especially, heats up. 

Check out everything a16z is doing with artificial intelligence here, including articles, projects, and more podcasts.

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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 programming, by vetting packages, reviewing code, and generally make sure you're not sacrificing security for speed. As he explained, LLMs can make developers more productive and even make their software more secure, but only if developers do their part by maintaining a safe supply chain.

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Feross Aboukhadijeh

Joel de la Garza

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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 tickets. As a result, the old value metric of “users” is being replaced by “output,” and it’s upending how companies monetize.

This conversation goes deep on:

• What new pricing models will emerge in an AI-native world
   
• Why usage-based billing is gaining ground—and where it breaks
   
• How to align GTM teams and customer success orgs with evolving value metrics
   
• Strategic advice for SaaS founders navigating hybrid business models and incentive design

If you’re selling software today, you don’t want to miss this discussion.

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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.

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