Building a Thriving AI Ecosystem with Lisa Su

a16z’s Chris Lyons speaks with Earvin "Magic" Johnson about his 30-year journey from athlete to billionaire businessman. They cover the art of deal-making, lessons from mentors Michael Ovitz and Dr. Jerry Buss, why boring businesses often make the best investments, and Magic's sports ownership portfolio, from the Dodgers to the Commanders to the Sparks. They also discuss what the next generation of athletes and entertainers should know about equity, building teams, and taking risks.

Cisco president and CPO Jeetu Patel speaks with a16z cofounder Marc Andreessen about why AI may finally break a 50-year productivity slump—and what's at stake if America doesn't win the race. They discuss where value will accrue in the AI stack, why open source complicates the US-China competition, and what's blowing Andreessen's mind right now.

a16z Head of Investor Relations Jen Kha speaks with general partner David George about the state of AI and private technology markets. David shares data on why AI companies are growing 2.5x faster than traditional software while spending significantly less on sales and marketing, driven by massive market pull and record-breaking ARR per employee. They discuss the rise of Model Busters, which are companies that grow faster and longer than anyone would have modeled, like the iPhone. They also highlight real-world adoption at Chime and Rocket Mortgage alongside portfolio breakouts like Harvey, Abridge, and ElevenLabs.

This episode originally appeared on the Network State Podcast. Balaji Srinivasan and Benedict Evans sit down in Singapore for a wide-ranging conversation on the mechanics of disruption. Evans, a former Andreessen Horowitz partner who now writes one of tech's most-read newsletters, argues that the conversation about any technology peaks during the transition—not at 0% or 100% adoption. They cover AI's real capabilities and limits, the politics of technological disruption, why crypto's killer metric is block space, and what smart glasses, elevator attendants, and the elephant graph reveal about how change works.

Christopher Mims and Tim Higgins of the Wall Street Journal sit down with a16z General Partner Martin Casado on WSJ’s Bold Names to ask whether the AI spending boom is a bubble waiting to burst. Martin explains why the fundamentals differ dramatically from the dot-com era—when WorldCom had $40 billion in debt versus today's tech giants with hundreds of billions on their balance sheets—and why a speculative valuation correction shouldn't be confused with systemic collapse. They also discuss where a16z sees opportunity in the "long tail" of AI companies beyond the state-of-the-art large language models.