The a16z Show

What if finding your next job, co-founder, or collaborator depended less on a resume and more on who is willing to vouch for you? Cosign is building a professional network around those signals, with the longer-term goal of giving AI agents access to the relationship and reputation data that traditional networks keep locked away. a16z New Media’s David Booth and Dhruv Gupta join MTS to introduce the Cosign Awards, which recognize standout operators, companies, and products based on nominations from the people who know their work. They also unpack the bigger idea behind Cosign: mapping the people and relationships that rarely show up in public data, then making that graph accessible to both humans and agents. Looking ahead, they imagine professional networking where your personal agent can talk directly to a company’s agent, determine whether there’s a potential fit, and only bring the opportunity to you when there’s a genuine “coincidence of intent.”

What happens when AI makes legal work cheap enough to take cases lawyers couldn't afford to touch before? Eve CEO Jay Madheswaran argues that AI won't just cut costs for law firms. It could expand access to legal representation by making an entirely new class of cases economically viable. Jay joins a16z General Partner Alex Rampell to explain how Eve is automating plaintiff law from the first client call through settlement, and why some firms are already using it to increase the number of clients each attorney can manage from roughly 100 to 500. They also discuss how AI could shift lawyers toward higher-value advocacy, why agents may eventually negotiate with other agents, and what happens to the legal system when bringing a case becomes dramatically cheaper.

America’s defense, energy, manufacturing, and robotics booms are increasingly becoming one story: the rebuilding of the country’s industrial base. This year’s AD50 highlights the companies building across that stack, from critical materials and factories to the systems they ultimately power. a16z’s Erin Price-Wright and Connor Love join Elena Burger to unpack what has changed. They discuss how defense demand can help finance manufacturing capacity that ultimately serves much larger commercial markets, why AI is changing the economics of American factories, and how a new generation of founders is applying lessons from SpaceX, Tesla, Anduril, and Palantir to mining, energy, manufacturing, and defense. They also make the case that these companies are no longer simply important to America. With private capital increasingly willing to fund physical infrastructure and production before government demand is guaranteed, they can become some of the most valuable companies in the world.

Mark Cuban thinks AI could transform healthcare, but it won’t fix opaque prices and broken incentives on its own. His starting point for employers: run every benefits contract through AI and ask where you’re getting ripped off. Mark joins a16z General Partner Julie Yoo and Erik Torenberg to discuss what he’s learned building Cost Plus Drugs, why trust is its core product, and how greater transparency could put pressure on healthcare costs. They also explore where AI can help, what personalized medicine could look like, how the role of doctors may change, and why Mark believes founders should use AI to learn, not as an excuse to stop thinking.

What should school look like if AI can help students learn dramatically faster? Alpha School founder Joe Liemandt argues the answer isn’t to fill the extra time with more academics, but to redesign school around the skills traditional classrooms struggle to teach: agency, teamwork, entrepreneurship, communication, and doing hard things. Joe joins Erik Torenberg and Horowitz and Andreessen Academy co-founder Gagan Biyani to discuss Alpha’s model, where students spend two hours a day on core academics and the rest developing real-world skills through projects. They explore what that approach can teach higher education, why motivation may matter more than curriculum, and how HAA is applying similar principles to college-age students by putting building, relationships, and real-world experience at the center of the learning experience. They also discuss what parents need to believe before choosing a new educational model, why Joe expects AI to drive an explosion in entrepreneurship, and why the most important question for students may not be which field is safest from AI, but what they care enough about to build.