The a16z Show

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Building Defense for the Agentic Era: Kevin Mandia Oct 06, 2026

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a16z General Partner David George sits down with Armadin founder and CEO Kevin Mandia to discuss what happens to cybersecurity when attackers can operate at machine speed.

After 30 years in security and building Mandiant, Kevin says AI convinced him to get back on the field. He explains how AI changes the economics of cyberattacks, allowing attackers to probe thousands of paths simultaneously, and why that means defense will ultimately need to become autonomous too.

They also unpack Armadin’s approach: continuously attacking customers’ systems with AI to find exploitable vulnerabilities before adversaries do, then building toward autonomous defenses that can respond in real time. Kevin shares what Armadin has learned from finding more than 90 zero-days in production environments this year, why humans can’t remain in the detect-and-respond loop, and how the entire security stack could change over the next few years.

Resources:

Learn more about Kevin Mandia and Armadin: https://www.armadin.com/team-members/kevin-mandia

Follow David George on X: https://x.com/DavidGeorge83

Learn more about Armadin: https://www.armadin.com/

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Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures.

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The Top 100 Consumer AI Apps: Who’s Actually Paying? Oct 05, 2026

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a16z Editorial Partner Elena Burger sits down with investing partners Olivia Moore and Josh Elman to unpack the seventh edition of a16z’s Top 100 Consumer AI Apps, including a new dimension this time: what consumers are actually paying for.

The data reveals a striking power-user economy. Only a small share of consumers currently pay for AI, but among those who do, spending is heavily concentrated at the top. Olivia and Josh discuss why developers, creators, and other power users dominate spending today, and why subscriptions may not be the business model that ultimately brings consumer AI to everyone.

They also dig into the rise of personal agents, the different trajectories of ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini, how ads could reshape AI economics, and the enormous amount of consumer white space still left to build, from shopping and entertainment to social, dating, and marketplaces.

Resources:

Read the Top 100 Consumer AI Apps, Seventh Edition: https://www.a16z.news/p/top-100-consumer-ai-apps-seventh

Follow Olivia Moore: https://x.com/omooretweets

Follow Josh Elman: https://x.com/joshelman

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David George & Jack Altman on AI, Autonomy, and the Next $25 Trillion Oct 04, 2026

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a16z General Partner David George joins Jack Altman on Uncapped to make the case that many of the biggest debates in AI are framed the wrong way. Frontier models or open source? Labs or applications? David’s answer is often “and.” With AI adoption still concentrated among a relatively small group of heavy users, he argues there could be room for multiple layers of the stack to grow at once.

David and Jack discuss why demand for compute continues to outstrip supply, why applications can thrive even as frontier labs expand into new products, and why consumer AI may still be at the beginning of its biggest shift, from reactive chatbots to proactive assistants that can act on our behalf.

They also zoom out to autonomy, robotics, healthcare, and the next generation of technology companies, before turning to venture itself: why David believes today’s product cycle is unusually strong, how capital can accelerate AI companies in ways it couldn’t during the SaaS era, and why founders and narrative become increasingly important as companies scale.

This conversation originally appeared on Jack Altman’s Uncapped.

Resources:

Follow David George on X: https://x.com/DavidGeorge83

Follow Jack Altman: https://x.com/jaltma

Listen to more from Uncapped: https://www.youtube.com/@uncappedpod

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Beyond the God Model | Alex Atallah & Amjad Masad Oct 03, 2026

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A16z’s Erik Torenberg sits down with OpenRouter’s Alex Atallah and Replit founder and CEO Amjad Masad to discuss why the future of AI may look less like one all-purpose model and more like an ecosystem of specialized models working together.

Alex explains why OpenRouter is betting on “neurodiversity”: different models trained in different ways, routed and combined based on the job at hand. Amjad makes a similar case from inside the enterprise, where companies increasingly need to own their AI capabilities rather than depend entirely on a single model provider.

They explore what happens when general-purpose agents give way to teams of specialized agents, why smaller models can sometimes be cheaper, safer, and easier to control, and how routing and model fusion could deliver frontier-level performance at lower cost. They also get into agent-to-agent communication, AI security, and why the next generation of companies may need an independence layer across models, clouds, and data.

Resources:

Follow Alex Atallah on X: https://x.com/alexatallah

Follow Amjad Masad on X: https://x.com/amasad

Learn more about OpenRouter: https://openrouter.ai

Learn more about Replit: https://replit.com

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Why AI Agents Can Beat the Incumbents Oct 02, 2026

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a16z’s Seema Amble and Elena Burger sit down with Lio co-founder and CEO Vladimir Keil to ask where AI-native startups have an advantage when incumbent software companies already own the customer, the data, and the system of record.

Their answer comes down to the work that happens outside those systems. In procurement, a final price in an ERP can hide hundreds of emails, spreadsheets, supplier conversations, engineering analyses, and decisions across legal, finance, and operations. Vlad explains how Lio uses multi-agent systems to take on more of that end-to-end work, from sourcing and RFQs to negotiation, shipment tracking, and invoices.

They also discuss how enterprises learn to trust agents with increasingly consequential decisions, why the last 20% of an internal AI build can require most of the effort, and what happens when both buyers and suppliers have agents working on their behalf.

Resources:

Follow Vladimir Keil on X: https://x.com/askvladi?lang=en

Follow Vladimir Keil on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vladimir-keil/

Follow Seema Amble on X: https://x.com/seema_amble

Learn more about Lio: https://www.lio.ai/

Seema Amble’s “Investing in Lio” article: https://a16z.com/announcement/investing-in-lio/

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Rebuilding the Internet for Privacy | Barrett Lyon on DoxxNet Oct 01, 2026

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a16z’s Joel de la Garza sits down with DoxxNet founder Barrett Lyon to discuss what it would take to rebuild the internet around privacy, direct communication, and less dependence on centralized intermediaries.

Barrett explains why he thinks traditional VPNs only solve part of the problem and how DoxxNet is building a parallel mesh network where users can communicate peer-to-peer, transfer large files, make calls, and message without routing those interactions through a central application server. He also explains why the company owns its infrastructure and runs its AI systems locally rather than relying on third-party inference providers. doxxnet_assembly

They also get into the growing amount of tracking embedded across the internet, what happens when that data can be analyzed by increasingly capable AI, and why Barrett believes the underlying protocols of the internet are due for another wave of experimentation. Along the way, he shares lessons from decades of building internet infrastructure, from fighting early DDoS attacks to mapping the internet and building global networks.

Resources:

Learn more about DoxxNet: https://doxx.net

Follow Barrett Lyon on X: https://x.com/BarrettLyon

Follow Joel de la Garza on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/3448827723723234

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The $1 Trillion AI Buildout | State of Markets Sep 30, 2026

Show notes

a16z’s David George, Sarah Wang, Alex Immerman, and Santiago Rodriguez unpack 25 key charts from the latest State of Markets presentation, from the scale of the AI infrastructure buildout to what adoption looks like inside companies today.

They examine why rising markets have so far been supported by earnings rather than multiple expansion, why hyperscaler CapEx is approaching $1 trillion annually, and why demand for compute continues to outrun supply. They also look at the downstream effects of that spending across chips, power, construction, and physical infrastructure. State of Markets

Then they move up the stack: OpenAI and Anthropic’s revenue growth, the gap between AI deployment and measurable enterprise impact, the rise of agents, falling inference costs, and what all of this means for SaaS. They close with where the team is spending time next, including consumer agents, robotics, autonomy, AI and biology, personal health, defense, and the continued diffusion of AI across the enterprise. State of Markets

Resources:

Follow David George on X: https://x.com/DavidGeorge83

Follow Sarah Wang on X: https://x.com/sarahdingwang

Follow Alex Immerman on X: https://x.com/aleximm

Follow Santiago Rodriguez on X: https://x.com/santiago__rdz

Read David’s piece ‘There are only two paths left for software’: https://a16z.com/there-are-only-two-paths-left-for-software/

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The Personal Agent Race Is Here | Anish Acharya & David Pawlan Sep 29, 2026

Show notes

a16z General Partner Anish Acharya sits down with Assistant Benchmark creator David Pawlan to unpack the sudden explosion of personal AI agents and what it will take for one to become part of everyday life.
David has been testing dozens of assistants across real-world tasks, from managing email and booking travel to handling financial admin. They discuss why the most useful agents may become increasingly invisible, proactively checking you into flights, finding refunds, filing reimbursements, or simply handling the small tasks that pile up across everyday life.
They also explore whether the winning interface is an app, text thread, voice, or wearable; how much autonomy consumers will actually give their agents; and what happens when agents start interacting with other agents. From commerce and restaurant reservations to entirely new agent-native services, Anish and David ask what the internet looks like when software starts acting on our behalf.

This episode was recorded on September 24, 2026.

Resources:

Follow David Pawlan on X: https://x.com/DavidPawlan

Follow Anish Acharya on X: https://x.com/illscience

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AI Can Write Code. Why Isn’t Software Better? Sep 28, 2026

Show notes

a16z’s Ben Horowitz and Martin Casado sit down with TypeSafe AI founder Diogo Almeida to ask a simple question: AI has become remarkably capable, so where is all the automation?

Diogo argues that coding agents may help us write software faster, but the software they produce still largely works the way software always has. TypeSafe is taking a different approach with Jev: putting intelligence inside software itself, so developers can build programs that reason about intent and make probabilistic decisions rather than simply generate text for a human to interpret.

They discuss why reliability is the key to making AI genuinely programmable, how this could open a new era of probabilistic software, and why established SaaS companies may be particularly well positioned to benefit. Ultimately, Diogo’s goal is straightforward: technology that can reliably “do what I mean.”

Resources:

Follow Diogo Almeida: https://x.com/CompleteSkeptic

Learn more about TypeSafe AI: https://typesafe.ai/

Follow TypeSafe AI: https://x.com/typesafeai

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Follow Martin Casado on X: https://x.com/martin_casado

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Building a Team at AI Speed | Harvey’s Maggie Landers Sep 27, 2026

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a16z’s Katie Kirsch sits down with Harvey VP of Talent Maggie Landers to discuss what happens inside a company growing at AI speed, and how you preserve culture while adding more than 1,000 employees in a year.

Maggie explains why Harvey prioritizes progress over perfection, how its values of simplicity, decisiveness, and “job’s not finished” shape the way people work, and why moving quickly requires giving employees significant trust and autonomy. For people accustomed to being the “A student,” that can mean learning to experiment, make mistakes, and course-correct quickly.

They also get into how Harvey identifies people who can thrive in that environment, what changes when most of your company is relatively new, the role its founders play in maintaining culture, and why judgment becomes increasingly important when employees are given the freedom to move fast.

Resources:

Follow Maggie Landers on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/maggiecohenlanders

Follow Katie Kirsch on X: https://x.com/katiekirsch

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