AI + a16z

Giving New Life to Unstructured Data with LLMs and Agents

Anant Bhardwaj and Guido Appenzeller

Posted June 10, 2025

In this episode of AI + a16z, Instabase founder and CEO Anant Bhardwaj joins a16z Infra partner Guido Appenzeller to discuss the revolutionary impact of LLMs on analyzing unstructured data and documents (like letting banks verify identity and approve loans via WhatsApp) and shares his vision for how AI agents could take things even further (by automating actions based on those documents).

In more detail, they discuss:

  • Why legacy robotic process automation (RPA) struggles with unstructured inputs.
  • How Instabase developed layout-aware models to extract insights from PDFs and complex documents.
  • Why predictability, not perfection, is the key metric for generative AI in the enterprise.
  • The growing role of AI agents at compile time (not runtime).
  • A vision for decentralized, federated AI systems that scale automation across complex workflows.

More About This Podcast

Artificial intelligence is changing everything from art to enterprise IT, and a16z is watching all of it with a close eye. This podcast features discussions with leading AI engineers, founders, and experts, as well as our general partners, about where the technology and industry are heading.

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