The a16z Show

Travis Kalanick joins TBPN to discuss Atoms, his vision for industrial AI, and why he believes the biggest opportunities in AI lie beyond software.

He explains how Atoms is bringing autonomy to mining, logistics, and food production, why robotics will reshape physical industries, and how lower costs and greater automation could unlock entirely new economic opportunities. Travis also reflects on raising $1.7 billion, building in stealth, regulation, hiring, and what he's learned since Uber.

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Travis Kalanick, Ben Horowitz, and Erik Torenberg reunite to reflect on Uber's early days, the investment that almost happened, and why Kalanick believes the next great technology opportunity lies beyond software.

They discuss the lessons of building Uber, the value of founder-led companies, and why Kalanick spent nearly eight years quietly building Atoms before stepping back into the spotlight.

The conversation explores industrial AI, robotics, autonomy, mining, food production, and Kalanick's vision for digitizing the physical world, where software, manufacturing, real estate, and transportation come together to transform entire industries.

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Applied Intuition has spent the past decade building the software that powers intelligent machines, from passenger vehicles and trucks to defense systems, mining equipment, and industrial robots.

In this conversation, Marc Andreessen and Erik Torenberg sit down with Applied Intuition cofounders Qasar Younis and Peter Ludwig to discuss the emergence of physical AI and the company's latest launch, Dana, a new platform designed to accelerate the development of autonomous systems.

They explore autonomous vehicles, robotics, world models, simulation, AI infrastructure, and the engineering challenges of deploying intelligence safely in the physical world. Along the way, they discuss self-driving cars, humanoid robots, global competition, and why lowering the barrier to building physical AI could unlock an entirely new generation of products and companies.

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As governments weigh new restrictions on frontier AI models, one question is becoming increasingly important: what role should open source play in the future of artificial intelligence?

Theo Jaffee and Sofia Puccini speak with Hugging Face CEO Clément Delangue about AI regulation, open source safety, model routing, and why he believes competition—not consolidation—is essential for the industry's future.

They discuss GPT-5, government oversight of frontier models, Hugging Face surpassing $100 million in annual recurring revenue, local AI, China's open-source ecosystem, Europe's AI ambitions, and why routing workloads across specialized models could fundamentally reshape where value is created in AI.

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Recorded live at the New Media Summit, Erik Torenberg sits down with Replit founder and CEO Amjad Masad to discuss founder-led storytelling, building in public, and the role of media in company building.

Masad reflects on Replit’s decade-long journey, including the years before the company’s recent breakout growth, and explains why communicating a vision can be just as important as executing on it. He argues that for many founders, especially those building ambitious products ahead of the market, telling a compelling story is often necessary to attract talent, capital, and early believers.

The conversation explores social media, authenticity, public communication, company-building, and how founders can develop a voice that resonates beyond their product. Along the way, Masad shares lessons from building Replit, navigating controversy, and why he believes founders should think carefully about when to go direct and what story they're trying to tell.

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As part of our summer replay series, we're revisiting one of our most-discussed conversations from the past year.

David Sacks joins Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz, and Erik Torenberg to discuss the intersection of AI, crypto, regulation, and American competitiveness.

The conversation explores the Trump administration's approach to AI and crypto policy, open source AI, export controls, energy and infrastructure, the global race with China, and the role regulation plays in shaping innovation. They also discuss stablecoins, the future of AI development, permissionless innovation, and why they believe America's long-term advantage depends on enabling builders rather than slowing them down.

Along the way, Sacks shares his perspective on AI safety, decentralized technology, federal versus state regulation, and what it will take for the U.S. to remain the global leader in emerging technologies.

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As part of our summer replay series, we're revisiting one of our favorite conversations on the future of AI infrastructure.

SemiAnalysis founder Dylan Patel joins Erin Price-Wright, Guido Appenzeller, and Erik Torenberg to examine the rapidly evolving economics of AI hardware, from GPUs and custom silicon to data centers, power, and the global race for compute.

The conversation explores NVIDIA's competitive advantages, the rise of custom chips from Google, Amazon, and Meta, the economics of frontier AI models, and the infrastructure constraints shaping the industry's next phase. They also discuss AI startups, export controls, robotics, enterprise software, and why simply copying NVIDIA isn't enough to build a winning AI hardware company.

Whether you're building AI products, investing in infrastructure, or trying to understand where the industry is headed, this conversation offers a practical look at the forces shaping the future of compute.

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As part of our summer replay series, we're revisiting one of the standout conversations from Runtime, a16z's conference on AI infrastructure and the future of computing.

Gavin Baker, Managing Partner and CIO of Atreides Management, joins David George to examine the biggest questions surrounding today's AI investment cycle. Is AI a bubble? What does the unprecedented buildout of data centers, GPUs, and compute infrastructure mean for the economy? And how should investors think about the companies building the next generation of AI?

The conversation explores frontier models, Nvidia, Google, custom silicon, AI infrastructure, application software, robotics, and why Baker believes today's AI investment cycle looks fundamentally different from the internet bubble of the early 2000s. Along the way, they discuss the economics of GPUs, enterprise software, AI business models, and what comes next as AI moves from experimentation into the broader economy.

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Every blockchain today relies on replication techniques first developed in the 1980s by researchers who weren't thinking about cryptocurrencies at all.

In this episode, Tim Roughgarden speaks with MIT professor and Turing Award winner Barbara Liskov, one of the pioneers of programming languages, fault tolerance, and distributed systems. Joined by a16z crypto research partner Ittai Abraham, they trace the evolution of ideas that now underpin modern blockchain networks.

The conversation explores viewstamped replication, Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance (PBFT), state machine replication, and why concepts developed decades before Bitcoin became the foundation for today's blockchain protocols. Along the way, Liskov reflects on the relationship between theory and practice, the importance of modularity and formal reasoning, and why AI is creating a new generation of systems research.

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We're excited to share a special feed drop from The a16z Crypto Show.

In the first episode of First Principles: The Scientific Roots of Blockchain Technology, Tim Roughgarden and Ittai Abraham trace the decades of computer science research that laid the foundation for modern blockchains.

Long before Bitcoin, researchers were studying one of distributed computing's hardest challenges: how independent machines can reliably agree on a shared state, even when some participants are faulty or malicious. Bitcoin didn't invent that problem, but it introduced a breakthrough solution in a radically different, permissionless setting.

The conversation explores Byzantine agreement, state machine replication, proof of work, proof of stake, Tendermint, Casper, DAG-based protocols, and why concepts developed decades ago continue to shape the design of today's fastest and most secure blockchain networks.

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Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures.

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