The a16z Show

In this latest episode on the State of AI, Ben and Marc discuss how small AI startups can compete with Big Tech’s massive compute and data scale advantages, reveal why data is overrated as a sellable asset, and unpack all the ways the AI boom compares to the internet boom.

Subscribe to the Ben & Marc podcast: https://link.chtbl.com/benandmarc

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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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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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Over the past decade, usage-based pricing has soared in popularity. Why? Because it aligns cost with value, letting customers pay only for what they use. But, that flexibility is not without issues - especially when it comes to predicting revenue. Fortunately, with the right process and infrastructure, your usage-based revenue can become more predictable than the traditional seat-based SaaS model. 

In this episode from the a16z Growth team, Fivetran’s VP of Strategy and Operations Travis Ferber and Alchemy’s Head of Sales Dan Burrill join a16z Growth’s Revenue Operations Partner Mark Regan. Together, they discuss the art of generating reliable usage-based revenue. They share tips for avoiding common pitfalls when implementing this pricing model - including how to nail sales forecasting, adopting the best tools to track usage, and deal with the initial lack of customer data. 

Resources: 

Learn more about pricing, packaging, and monetization strategies: a16z.com/pricing-packaging

Find Dan on Twitter: https://twitter.com/BurrillDaniel

Find Travis on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/travisferber

Find Mark on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mregan178

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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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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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On May 21, the California Senate passed bill 1047.

This bill – which sets out to regulate AI at the model level – wasn’t garnering much attention, until it slid through an overwhelming bipartisan vote of 32 to 1 and is now queued for an assembly vote in August that would cement it into law. In this episode, a16z General Partner Anjney Midha and Venture Editor Derrick Harris breakdown everything the tech community needs to know about SB-1047.

This bill really is the tip of the iceberg, with over 600 new pieces of AI legislation swirling in the United States. So if you care about one of the most important technologies of our generation and America’s ability to continue leading the charge here, we encourage you to read the bill and spread the word.

Read the bill: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202320240SB1047

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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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Consumer AI is moving fast, so who's leading the charge? 

a16z Consumer Partners Olivia Moore and Bryan Kim discuss our GenAI 100 list and what it takes for an AI model to stand out and dominate the market.

They discuss how these cutting-edge apps are connecting with their users and debate whether traditional strategies like paid acquisition and network effects are still effective. We're going beyond rankings to explore pivotal benchmarks like D7 retention and introduce metrics that define today's AI market.

Note: This episode was recorded prior to OpenAI's Spring update. Catch our latest insights in the previous episode to stay ahead!

Resources:

Link to the Gen AI 100: https://a16z.com/100-gen-ai-apps

Find Bryan on Twitter: https://twitter.com/kirbyman01

Find Olivia on Twitter: https://x.com/omooretweets

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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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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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a16z General Partner David Haber talks with Marty Chavez, vice chairman and partner at Sixth Street Partners, about the foundational role he’s had in merging technology and finance throughout his career, and the magical promises and regulatory pitfalls of AI.

This episode is taken from “In the Vault”, a new audio podcast series by the a16z Fintech team. Each episode features the most influential figures in financial services to explore key trends impacting the industry and the pressing innovations that will shape our future. 

Resources: 
Listen to more of In the Vault: https://a16z.com/podcasts/a16z-live

Find Marty on X: https://twitter.com/rmartinchavez

Find David on X: https://twitter.com/dhaber

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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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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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This was a big week in the world of AI, with both OpenAI and Google dropping significant updates. So big that we decided to break things down in a new format with our Consumer partners Bryan Kim and Justine Moore. We discuss the multi-modal companions that have found their voice, but also why not all audio is the same, and why several nuances like speed and personality really matter.

Resources:

OpenAI’s Spring announcement: https://openai.com/index/hello-gpt-4o/

Google I/O announcements: https://blog.google/technology/ai/google-io-2024-100-announcements/

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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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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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Make sure to check out our new AI + a16z feed: https://link.chtbl.com/aiplusa16z
 

a16z General Partner Anjney Midha joins the podcast to discuss what's happening with hardware for artificial intelligence. Nvidia might have cornered the market on training workloads for now, but he believes there's a big opportunity at the inference layer — especially for wearable or similar devices that can become a natural part of our everyday interactions. 

Here's one small passage that speaks to his larger thesis on where we're heading:

"I think why we're seeing so many developers flock to Ollama is because there is a lot of demand from consumers to interact with language models in private ways. And that means that they're going to have to figure out how to get the models to run locally without ever leaving without ever the user's context, and data leaving the user's device. And that's going to result, I think, in a renaissance of new kinds of chips that are capable of handling massive workloads of inference on device.

"We are yet to see those unlocked, but the good news is that open source models are phenomenal at unlocking efficiency.  The open source language model ecosystem is just so ravenous."

More from Anjney:

The Quest for AGI: Q*, Self-Play, and Synthetic Data

Making the Most of Open Source AI

Safety in Numbers: Keeping AI Open

Investing in Luma AI

Follow everyone on X:

Anjney Midha

Derrick Harris

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

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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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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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In 2009 Discord cofounder and CEO, Jason Citron, started building tools and infrastructure for games. Fast forward to today and the platform has over 200 million monthly active users. 

In this episode, Jason, alongside a16z General Partner Anjney Midha—who merged his company Ubiquity6 with Discord in 2021—shares insights on the nuances of community-driven product development, the shift from gamer to developer, and Discord’s longstanding commitment to platform extensibility. 

Now, with Discord's recent release of embeddable apps, what can we expect now that it's easier than ever for developers to build? 

Resources: 

Find Jason on Twitter: https://twitter.com/jasoncitron

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

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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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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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Human nature fears the unknown, and with the rapid progress of AI, concerns naturally arise. Uncanny robocalls, data breaches, and misinformation floods are among the worries. But what about security in the era of large language models?

In this episode, we hear from security leaders at OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google DeepMind. Matt Knight, Head of Security at OpenAI, Jason Clinton, CISO at Anthropic, and Vijay Bolina, CISO at Google DeepMind, are joined by Joel de la Garza, operating partner at a16z and former chief security officer at Box and Citigroup.

Together, they explore how large language models impact security, including changes in offense and defense strategies, misuse by nation-state actors, prompt engineering, and more. In this changing environment, how do LLMs transform security dynamics? Let's uncover the answers.

Resources:

Find Joel on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/3448827723723234/

Find Vijay Bolina on Twitter: https://twitter.com/vijaybolina

Find Jason Clinton on Twitter: https://twitter.com/JasonDClinton

Find Matt Knight  on Twitter: https://twitter.com/embeddedsec

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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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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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In recent years, the AI landscape has seen huge advancements, from the release of Dall-E 2 in April 2022 to the emergence of AI music and video models in early 2024.

While creative tools often steal the spotlight, AlphaFold 2 marked a groundbreaking AI breakthrough in biology in 2021. Since its release, this pioneering tool for predicting protein structures has been utilized by over 1.7 million scientists worldwide, influencing fields ranging from genomics to computational chemistry.

In this episode, DeepMind's VP of Research for Science, Pushmeet Kohli, and a16z General Partner Vijay Pande discuss the transformative potential of AI in scientific exploration. Can AI lead to fundamentally new discoveries in science? Let's find out.

Resources: 

Find Pushmeet on Twitter: https://twitter.com/pushmeet

Find Vijay on Twitter: https://twitter.com/vijaypande

Learn more about Google DeepMind: https://deepmind.google

Read DeepMind’s AlphaFold whitepaper: https://deepmind.google/discover/blog/a-glimpse-of-the-next-generation-of-alphafold

Read DeepMind’s AlphaGeometry: https://deepmind.google/discover/blog/alphageometry-an-olympiad-level-ai-system-for-geometry

Read DeepMind’s research on new materials: https://deepmind.google/discover/blog/millions-of-new-materials-discovered-with-deep-learning/

Read DeepMind’s paper on FunSearch, focused on new discoveries in mathematics: https://deepmind.google/discover/blog/funsearch-making-new-discoveries-in-mathematical-sciences-using-large-language-models

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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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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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