a16z@a16zAug 28

Today, a16z is announcing the Machine Age Fund, a new $1.1 billion fund for founders rebuilding what intelligence runs on: chips, memory, networking, systems software, power, and the machines that bring AI into the physical world. Ben Horowitz, Martin Casado, and Raghu Raghuram see a new economic law. A thousand engineers cannot erase a two-year software lead, but a massive GPU cluster can turn capital directly into capability. Models are improving faster than the memory, interconnect, power, and cooling beneath them. The founder map is changing with it. Some of the strongest teams are moving from pure software into complex hardware because every constraint in the stack is now a company-building opportunity. In this conversation with Erik Torenberg, they explain what founders can build, why the opportunity reaches all the way down to the physical stack, and why a16z created a fund for it. 00:00 Intro 01:08 Why AI needs an entirely new infrastructure 02:02 The bottleneck is no longer the model 02:40 Founders saw it before investors did 06:07 Sold out through 2028 07:14 Why this time is different from 1999 08:57 The company whose idle hardware gained value 10:51 "Why didn't this fund exist five years ago?" 13:51 "Nobody likes to use AI more than AI" 17:06 The startup law that capital just broke 21:05 What Grok Bot got right 26:43 The case for a custom chip per model 28:23 Why AC power isn't good enough 32:07 Lots of new electricians 34:14 What one gigawatt can power 35:03 Why utilities can't just build faster 37:22 The data centers that give power back 38:01 Why we should never have called it AI 39:43 Why Nvidia will willingly leave money on the table 48:08 Hardware founders are older 52:36 Why America has to lead YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zx1Ec8LWFeM @bhorowitz @RaghuRaghuram @martin_casado @eriktorenberg