More About Jonathan
Jonathan Lai is a General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz, focused on a16z speedrun. Jon invests in early-stage teams building tomorrow’s AI x creative landscape—from developer tools to 3D simulations, vertical agents, and novel storytelling formats across video, games, audio, and more.
Before joining a16z, Jon led the North America games investments team at Tencent. Previously, Jon was a senior product manager at Riot Games, the developers of League of Legends, where he shipped the Riot Games API before the company was acquired by Tencent. He started his career in investment banking for Morgan Stanley.
Jon graduated from Harvard University with an MBA and BA in Economics, and lives in the Bay Area with his family.
Latest Content
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Hedra is an AI video company focused on character animation, making it easy to generate video scenes from an image and audio track or text script.
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By Colin Campbell and Jonathan Lai
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Anime is just getting started - today, new technologies and business models are accelerating a once niche industry to even greater heights.
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Generative AI is enabling a foundational shift in creative storytelling, empowering a new class of human creators to tell stories not feasible before.
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Gaming is not just entertainment—it's a revolution reshaping our culture, technology, and economy.
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We’re excited to share that we’re investing in k-ID - the best-in-class compliance engine for online safety and privacy management.
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We're thrilled to lead the $5M seed round for Yellow, a company focused on revolutionizing 3D character creation through generative AI.
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We’re excited to announce A16Z GAMES' investment in Kaedim, a new type of co-development platform providing AI-powered art outsourcing.
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Voice-First Apps, AI Moats, Never-Ending Games, and Anime. We asked over 40 partners across a16z to preview one big idea they believe will drive innovation in 2024. Here in our 3-part series, you’ll hear directly from partners across all our verticals, as we dive even more deeply into these ideas. What’s the why now? Who is already building in these spaces? What opportunities and challenges are on the horizon? And how can you get involved?
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The emergence of generative AI, cloud computing, and new spatial platforms is poised to disrupt 3D creation end-to-end.
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弊社ブログ記事、『ゲーム産業における生成AI革命』（the Generative AI Revolution in Game）の中では、初期的な考察としてAIツールがどのようにゲームクリエーターの効率を上げるかに注目した。これは、AIによってこれまでよりも迅速に、かつ大規模にゲームを制作できるようになるという話だ。もちろんそうなることは間違いないものの、AIはゲーム制作のやり方を変えるだけでなく、ゲームの本質そのものを変える。長期的には...
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Roblox cofounder and CEO David Baszucki and a16z's Jonathan Lai discuss the ways AI is changing games and virtual worlds and how we create them.
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We’re thrilled to announce that A16Z GAMES is leading the Series A in Pahdo Labs, a game studio building a next-generation anime RPG and UGC platform.
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We believe the largest opportunity long-term is in leveraging AI to change not just how we create games, but the nature of the games themselves.
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Years before the first blockchain was created, the sci-fi space MMO EVE Online proved out many of the core principles that define web3 today. This is why we are excited to be partnering with CCP on a new project set in t...
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There's much more to generative AI than heroic avatars and tongue-in-cheek art. The potential applications are widespread, from drug discovery and therapy to writing, game development, education, ecommerce, and more. Las...
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In this special episode from a16z’s Bio Eats World podcast, general partners Vijay Pande and Jon Lai join bio editorial lead Olivia Webb to discuss the intersection of games and health, including: what constitutes a game, the “healthy dessert” problem, and the challenge of building a game that’s both fun and therapeutic.
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To celebrate the LA community and the city's growth, A16Z recently hosted Time to Build Los Angeles, an event where we invited LA-based investors, founders, and operators from across a diverse range of industries to talk...
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Bio + Health general partner Vijay Pande discusses the overlap between games and bio with Games general partner Jon Lai.
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Interoperability has long been a key guiding principle of the Metaverse - a vision that we can bring our digital identity and assets with us as we travel between virtual worlds.
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We are proud to announce GAMES FUND ONE, a16z’s inaugural fund dedicated to building the future of the games industry.
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From Shakespeare to the Beatles, and Star Wars to Fortnite, every generation has a set of entertainment properties that define its culture and shared universe of stories. As we look to the coming decade, we believe the n...
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The following transcript is from a conversation on the topic of NFTs in gaming, featuring Aleksander Larsen, Cofounder and COO, Sky Mavis/Axie Infinity; Gabby Dizon, Cofounder and CEO, Yield Guild Games; and Jonathan Lai...
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The African continent is in the midst of a massive generational shift, and with it a technological revolution. A young, middle-class, and rapidly growing population -- 1.3B people with an average age of 19 years old -- i...
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The games industry has consistently found new ways to reduce barriers to entry.
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The biggest social platforms today -- TikTok, Youtube, Instagram, to name just a few -- are heavily driven by creators who generate and share content for friends, family, and the broader community. As games continue to e...
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Massively multiplayer online games (MMOs) were some of the earliest social networks. In the late 1990s, MMOs like Ultima Online and EverQuest hosted hundreds of thousands of players who adventured together in 3D virtual...
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Welcome to 16 Minutes, our show where we talk about tech trends in the news. We have three expert guests: Eli Van Allen, associate professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and chief of the Division of Population Sciences at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute; a16z bio general partner Vineeta Agarwala; and a16z bio partner Jay Rughani.
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Games are one of the most powerful ways to bring people together.
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The games industry has been a story of expansion: For nearly 50 years, games have grown from smaller to larger audiences. From niche beginnings in the arcades in the 1970s, to expansion into the home through consoles and...
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In the 2000s, hundreds of millions of people devoured web games like Bejeweled and FarmVille, powered by Adobe Flash. In contrast to siloed console or PC games, these browser-based Flash games were incredibly accessible:...
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Collectibles are exploding. From trading cards to NFTs to virtual goods in video games, collectibles have seen massive growth over the past decade. For many, collecting is about story and emotion. A LeBron James rookie c...
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The next big social network will likely emerge from games.
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The a16z Marketplace 100 series explores the companies and trends behind largest and fastest-growing marketplace companies. See more at a16z.com/marketplace-100.
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We have two brief segments — taking up less than 16 Minutes! — in this week’s episode of "16 Minutes," where we talk about tech trends in the news, what’s hype/what’s real, and where we are on the long arc of innovation. Both segments touch on trends in gaming/ online worlds and entertainment — both now and "next."
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From gaming to edtech, marketplaces to social+, these were the most-read consumer tech posts of the year.
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An innovative new wave of social networks has arrived—from audio-first apps to social gaming to the countless consumer apps built with social in their DNA.
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Social Strikes Back is a series exploring the next generation of social networks and how they're shaping the future of consumer tech. See more at a16z.com/social-strikes-back.
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Social Strikes Back is a series exploring the next generation of social networks and how they're shaping the future of consumer tech. See more at a16z.com/social-strikes-back.
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True cloud-native games—those exclusive to and solely playable within the cloud—are poised to revolutionize gameplay and unlock new avenues of hyper-personalized storytelling and socializing. In this episode, Jade Raymond, VP of Stadia Games and Entertainment, and a16z partner Jonathan Lai, formerly of Riot Games and Tencent, talk about the challenges in building cloud-native games, their potential to upend prevailing business models and pricing, and most importantly, the spontaneous, social, super-shareable experiences that true cloud streaming will reveal. Through the rise of user-generated content, AI, and the cloud, they believe we're inching ever closer to the Metaverse. This episode is part of Social Strikes Back, a new series exploring the next generation of social networks and how they’re shaping the future of consumer tech. See more at a16z.com/social-strikes-back.
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Aliens are among us. Well, the online multiplayer game Among Us is -- a murder mystery set in space, where the group must figure out who the alien imposter is (a variation of party games like Werewolf or Mafia) -- has seemingly suddenly become very popular. On this episode of 16 Minutes on the News -- our show where we talk about what's in the headlines; tease apart what's hype/ what's real; and where we are on the long arc of innovation with related tech trends -- we cover: 1) Who, how, and why now? Especially since the game, from indie game company InnerSloth, has been around since 2018 -- what if it's NOT just "the pandemic effect" (where people are seeking new ways to connect). 2) What are the underlying trends involved -- from social to streaming -- but digging in on the twists, and nuances, of both. 3) What are the implications for startups and big companies when it comes to the gaming market, beyond this game?
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Dungeons & Dragons, the granddaddy of all role-playing games, has never been more popular than it is today. Released in 1976 the tabletop fantasy game was unique for introducing user-generated storytelling. One perso...
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At last week's Snap Partner Summit, a number of announcements -- including a navigation redesign and Bitmoji for Games -- have broader implications for the gaming industry and beyond. Especially when such messaging games, built on HTML5 and "mini programs" or apps-within-apps (as discussed by Connie Chan in context of WeChat and more), merge the key trends of mobile, social, and cloud gaming.
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As the shelter-in-place restrictions have tethered many people to their homes, livestreaming—broadcasting user-created video in real time—has skyrocketed. Platforms like Twitch, Caffeine, YouTube Live, and Facebook have...
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In this episode, a16z partner Jon Lai joins host Lauren Murrow to talk about how game developers are grappling with skyrocketing numbers, why this may be an inflection point for VR, the surprising transition of professional sports into esports, and why live-streaming is having its moment.
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This episode of 16 Minutes on the news covers: 1) Google could bring Steam support to Chrome OS, according to an earlier unconfirmed report, and what that could mean for the broader gaming ecosystem, developers as well as devices -- with a16z general partner Andrew Chen and Jonathan Lai on the consumer team. 2) New York restaurants and retail establishments can no longer reject cash payments under legislation that was passed by the City Council there; what this says about the banking system more broadly, why it's a regressive tax on the poor and therefore a progressive move -- at 8:57 with a16z general partner Alex Rampell on the fintech team. 3) Updates on COVID-19 disease -- at 16:44 based on latest reports from WHO and CDC as of Friday March 6.
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Much of the buzz around cloud gaming has centered on its potential to “kill the console”—to remove the need for local hardware to play games. But the ongoing focus on hardware fails to grasp cloud gaming’s true potential...
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News and trends covered this week include: * Star Wars trailer in Fortnite, gaming, and future of social -- with @tocelot * Congress warns tech companies to take action on encryption, or else "we will impose our will on you" -- with @martin_casado @joeldelagarza
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From Fortnite to Untitled Goose Game, next-generation video games are unlike anything we've seen before. These are the tech trends turning gaming into a massive, culture-defining phenomenon.
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Games have come a long way since Pong. Consisting of a single white pixel bouncing across the screen—a crude simulation of table tennis—the 1972 arcade classic was the nascent gaming industry's first hit.