The a16z Show

a16z’s Raghu Raghuram sits down with AWS CEO Matt Garman to discuss how AI is reshaping the cloud, from the needs of AI-native startups to infrastructure increasingly designed for agents. Matt explains how AWS is adapting as agents write code and manage infrastructure, why it’s reserving scarce GPU capacity for startups, and where custom chips like Trainium and Graviton fit into the AI stack. They also discuss Amazon's $220 billion capital investment, the shifting bottlenecks in the infrastructure buildout, what enterprises need to trust autonomous agents, and how AWS's own teams are building with agents.

a16z General Partner Angela Strange sits down with Valon’s Andrew Wang and Linda Du to unpack what it takes to rebuild the infrastructure underneath a $13 trillion mortgage market that still relies heavily on systems designed before the internet. Linda and Andrew explain why Valon chose the hardest path: becoming a regulated mortgage servicer, translating decades of federal and state regulation into software, and proving the platform on its own loans before selling it to the industry. That foundation made Valon roughly three times as efficient as traditional servicing and created the system of record it is now using to bring AI into complex mortgage workflows. They also discuss what AI makes possible on top of that infrastructure, from agents handling long-tail servicing tasks to voice interfaces and more personalized customer experiences. And they explain why deploying the technology into large regulated enterprises is ultimately as much a change-management challenge as a technical one.

a16z General Partner David George sits down with Armadin founder and CEO Kevin Mandia to discuss what happens to cybersecurity when attackers can operate at machine speed. After 30 years in security and building Mandiant, Kevin says AI convinced him to get back on the field. He explains how AI changes the economics of cyberattacks, allowing attackers to probe thousands of paths simultaneously, and why that means defense will ultimately need to become autonomous too. They also unpack Armadin’s approach: continuously attacking customers’ systems with AI to find exploitable vulnerabilities before adversaries do, then building toward autonomous defenses that can respond in real time. Kevin shares what Armadin has learned from finding more than 90 zero-days in production environments this year, why humans can’t remain in the detect-and-respond loop, and how the entire security stack could change over the next few years.

a16z Editorial Partner Elena Burger sits down with investing partners Olivia Moore and Josh Elman to unpack the seventh edition of a16z’s Top 100 Consumer AI Apps, including a new dimension this time: what consumers are actually paying for. The data reveals a striking power-user economy. Only a small share of consumers currently pay for AI, but among those who do, spending is heavily concentrated at the top. Olivia and Josh discuss why developers, creators, and other power users dominate spending today, and why subscriptions may not be the business model that ultimately brings consumer AI to everyone. They also dig into the rise of personal agents, the different trajectories of ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini, how ads could reshape AI economics, and the enormous amount of consumer white space still left to build, from shopping and entertainment to social, dating, and marketplaces.

a16z General Partner David George joins Jack Altman on Uncapped to make the case that many of the biggest debates in AI are framed the wrong way. Frontier models or open source? Labs or applications? David’s answer is often “and.” With AI adoption still concentrated among a relatively small group of heavy users, he argues there could be room for multiple layers of the stack to grow at once. David and Jack discuss why demand for compute continues to outstrip supply, why applications can thrive even as frontier labs expand into new products, and why consumer AI may still be at the beginning of its biggest shift, from reactive chatbots to proactive assistants that can act on our behalf. They also zoom out to autonomy, robotics, healthcare, and the next generation of technology companies, before turning to venture itself: why David believes today’s product cycle is unusually strong, how capital can accelerate AI companies in ways it couldn’t during the SaaS era, and why founders and narrative become increasingly important as companies scale. This conversation originally appeared on Jack Altman’s Uncapped.