The assumptions underpinning traditional penetration testing are starting to bend, and a new generation of AI-driven approaches is emerging.

Notes on distribution tactics, seizing mindshare…and an extended metaphor about pigeons.

Instabase's Anant Bhardwaj and a16z's Guido Appenzeller discuss the revolutionary impact of LLMs on analyzing and — some day — acting on unstructured data.

16 key shifts in how enterprises are budgeting for, buying, and deploying gen AI in 2025—and beyond.

What if one of healthcare’s most complex administrative challenges—revenue cycle management—was reframed as a data science problem? In this episode, Malinka Walaliyadde, co-founder and CEO of Akasa, joins Julie Yoo to un...

New revenue benchmarks for gen AI startups in year one, based on dozens of enterprise and consumer AI companies we’ve spent significant time with.

Enterprises buying AI are like your grandma getting an iPhone: they want to use it, but they need you to set it up.

Market research has long relied on expensive human surveys. Now AI research companies are replacing them with simulated societies of generative AI agents.

Plus: A framework for defining and refining your ICP, emerging developer patterns, and more in the May Enterprise newsletter.

LMArena is reframing the problem of benchmarking AI models: What if the best way to test is to put them in front of millions of users and let them vote?

In the not-so-distant future, consumers and businesses will be able to instruct an agent to make any payments they want on their behalf.

The United States should back a critical minerals champion powered by innovation, resilience, speed, and the ingenuity and resolve of American builders. 

To secure the United States’ position as the unrivaled world leader in AI, the federal government’s R&D strategy must prioritize tech startups, which we refer to as Little Tech. This strategy should focus on two pillars: (1) building robust national AI research infrastructure and (2) supporting research that will fuel American competitiveness.

Traditional search was built on links; GEO is built on language. A new paradigm is emerging, one driven not by page rank, but by AI models.

Policymakers want a thriving national AI market—but model thresholds based on compute or training costs will harm startups. Thresholds that target the application of AI tools, like revenue-based thresholds, are more likely to properly identify companies that are well-positioned to bear more substantial regulatory burdens.

What if we stopped trying to cure disease and started preventing it instead? In this episode, Dr. Eric Topol joins general partner Vijay Pande, PhD, to unpack the future of aging, prevention, and precision health—as explored in Eric's new book, Super Agers: An Evidence-Based Approach to Longevity.

The a16z Infra teams explores how LLMs are reshaping software development — from its potential as a new programming abstraction to its practical impacts.

Arif Nathoo, cofounder and CEO of Komodo Health, joins Jorge Conde and Jay Rughani to explore the transformative potential of healthcare data in reshaping biotech and healthcare innovation. Arif reflects on a decade-long...

Developers are moving past AI as just tooling and starting to treat AI agents as a new foundation for how software gets built.

A step-by-step framework to test if you know who your ICP is—or build it out if you don’t.

Why ICP misalignment is often the hidden cause of common problems across the entire company—and how to fix it.

A guide for product managers to stay current, build novel products, and level up their role alongside AI.

Anthropic's David Soria Parra discusses MCP's inception, exciting use cases for connecting LLMs to external sources, and what's coming next for the project.

Join a16z general partners Marc Andreessen, Julie Yoo, and Vijay Pande for an incisive exploration of what's driving—and stalling—transformation in healthcare. With the industry now consuming nearly 20% of U.S. GDP yet d...

a16z Infra partners Guido Appenzeller, Matt Bornstein, and Yoko Li discuss and debate one of the tech industry's buzziest words right now: AI agents.

We’re inching close to generalizable, deployable robot models, but still struggling to find the right bounds for these deployed systems.

ARES (Automatic Robot Evaluation System) is an all-in-one, open-source robot data platform, aimed at helping robotics researchers build better models.

AI-powered wearables will be more adaptive, agentic, and immersive than your smartphone. Meta’s Andrew Bosworth explains how.

Policymakers are proposing new transparency requirements for AI developers to disclose information ranging from model design and training data to safety testing procedures and predictions about speculative harms. While transparency is a laudable goal, many of these mandates provide minimal benefit to end users, but threaten to overwhelm Little Tech—our term for startups—with unconstitutional compliance burdens that would make it harder for them to compete with larger platforms.

a16z is excited to welcome Erik Torenberg as our newest General Partner, bringing a decade of experience at the intersection of investing, media, and networks. With our acquisition of Turpentine, Erik will help scale our media and network efforts while continuing to invest in the next generation of founders.

President Trump signs Congressional Review Act resolution. Stablecoin bill eligible for House Floor vote. SEC clarifies stablecoins view.

Seth Hain, SVP of R&D at Epic, joins a16z Bio + Health general partner Julie Yoo to explore technology in healthcare. Reflecting on over two decades of industry shifts, Seth shares how Epic has transitioned from enab...

What happens when AI doesn’t just generate content, but embodies it? I tested over 20 AI avatar products to understand what’s working and what's next.

Building your own GPU server—like the one described here—means no API calls to external services, no data leakage, and no usage throttles.

By Colin Campbell and Jonathan Lai

When people think about startups working with the government, the phrase “black box” often comes up. But what if that box is finally being pried open?

Elliot Cohen, cofounder of PillPack, joins Julie Yoo, a16z Bio + Health general partner. Together, they discuss Elliot's experience designing and building a consumer-first pharmacy alongside TJ Parker.

At a16z'a fourth annual Connect/Fintech event, discussions spanned what's working in AI, operational lessons on how to scale faster, and the future of banking charters.

We’re investing up to $1M in pre-seed/seed startups in tech, entertainment, and AI. Apply by May 11 → sr.a16z.com

Cher's digital closet was just the beginning. Online shopping is becoming intelligent, predictive, and visually intuitive.

Convex cofounder and Chief Scientist Sujay Jayakar and a16z General Partner Martin Casado discuss the real challenges of autonomous software development and why robust evals — and guardrails like type safety — matter more than ever.

Bundling your products can deepen your moat — or shrink your margins. Use these gut-checks before you pull the lever.

This month, a16z’s Consumer team released the fourth edition of the GenAI 100 — a data-driven ranking of the top 50 AI-first web products and mobile apps, based on unique monthly visits and active users.

Resend's Zeno Rocha and a16z's Yoko Li discuss how AI agents and MCP are reshaping the developer experience for email creation and programming overall.

Younger founders often lack the deep networks important for distribution and earned insights around high-value problems that older founders have. AI changes that.

The global race for AI leadership is no longer just about companies—it’s about nations. AI isn’t just computing infrastructure; it’s cultural infrastructure, economic strategy, and national security all rolled into one.

We explore what MCP is, how it changes the way AI interacts with tools, what developers are already building, and the challenges that still need solving. 

AI voice technology has been around for years — think Siri or Alexa — but the magic has been missing. That’s changing, and quickly!

The US government should invest in AI talent and infrastructure to ensure that Little Tech has the ability to compete and thrive.

This week, a16z shared our recommendations with the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) for how the United States can implement a competitiveness agenda that will enable it to continue to lead the world in AI development.

Sesame's Ankit Kumar and a16z's Anjney Midha do a deep dive into the research and engineering behind Sesame's cutting-edge AI model for conversations.

For startups, working with the Department of Defense (DoD) can feel like stepping into a fortress of bureaucracy — procurement is slow, compliance is daunting, and knowing who actually makes buying decisions is like navi...

We back founders pushing the limits of tech and entertainment.

These 50 companies aren’t just strengthening America’s ability to deter conflict, they’re re-industrializing America in the process.

For over a century, the United States has been the birthplace of world-changing innovation – from the Wright brothers’ first flight to the invention of the transistor, the moon landing, and the birth of the internet. But...

In this episode, Slingshot AI cofounders Daniel Cahn and Neil Parikh join a16z Bio + Health general partner Julie Yoo to explore how their mission to transform mental health care with AI took shape. Drawing from their un...

We unpacked the unconventional tactics in Deel's playbook to help guide the business strategy and culture of other startups.

AI is reshaping web development. At the center is agent experience (AX), a new paradigm where AI agents open new capabilities in web design and experience.

Henry Ward, cofounder and CEO of Carta, has spent over a decade scaling his company from an early-stage startup to a 2,000-person industry leader. In this a16z Speedrun conversation with Games partner Josh Lu, Henry shar...

Which AI apps are people actively using? What’s actually making money, beyond being popular? We analyzed the data.

a16z partners Guido Appenzeller and Marco Mascorro demystify how DeepSeek works and explain what the era of reasoning models means for AI.

We recently kicked off the latest a16z Talent x Opportunity initiative cohort in San Francisco with founders from five promising startups building software-enabled companies across fashion, gaming, media, and music.

In this episode of AI + a16z, a trio of security experts join a16z partner Joel de la Garza to discuss the security implications of the DeepSeek reasoning model that made waves recently. It's three separate discussions,...