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The AI Opportunity that goes beyond Models

The AI Opportunity that goes beyond Models

15 segments available

The a16z AI Apps team outlines how they are thinking about the AI application cycle and why they believe it represents the largest and fastest product shift in software to date. The conversation places AI in the context of prior platform waves, from PCs to cloud to mobile, and examines where adoption is already translating into real enterprise usage and revenue. They walk through three core investment themes: existing software categories becoming AI-native, new categories where software directly replaces labor, and applications built around proprietary data and closed-loop workflows. Using portfolio examples, the discussion shows how these models play out in practice and why defensibility, workflow ownership, and data moats matter more than novelty as AI applications scale. Timestamps: 00:00 - The AI Opportunity: Apps, Distribution, and Platform Shifts 02:17 - AI's Role in Enterprise and Consumer Applications 05:03 - Emerging AI Trends and Investment Strategies 08:43 - Traditional Software Going AI Native 14:40 - Software Eating Labor 17:04 - Case Study: Eve 21:33 - Building Defensible Moats 24:45 - Case Study: Salient 31:53 - The Walled Garden 40:23 - Incumbents vs. Startups 49:39 - AI Roll-ups 53:32 - Consumer AI Applications 56:03 - Model Aggregation Strategy 57:06 - Investment Process & Team 1:06:46 - Q&A: Customer Retention & Enterprise Sales Resources: Follow  Alex Rampell on X: https://twitter.com/arampell Follow Jen Kha on X: https://twitter.com/jkhamehl Follow David Haber on X: https://twitter.com/dhaber Follow Anish Acharya on X: https://twitter.com/illscience Stay Updated: If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to like, subscribe, and share with your friends! Find a16z on X: https://twitter.com/a16z Find a16z on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/a16z Listen to the a16z Podcast on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5bC65RDvs3oxnLyqqvkUYX Listen to the a16z Podcast on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a16z-podcast/id842818711 Not an offer or solicitation. None of the information herein should be taken as investment advice; Some of the companies mentioned are portfolio companies of a16z. Please see https://a16z.com/disclosures/ for more information. A list of investments made by a16z is available at https://a16z.com/portfolio.

Segments Timeline

1
0:01 - 2:17
2:15 duration507 words

The AI Opportunity: Apps, Distribution, and Platform Shifts

"So for everyone that I haven't met before, I'm Alex Rampel on the Apps Fund. I've been at the firm for 10 years. I stole this from Chris Dixon who published a post like this about probably 12 or 13 ye..."

2
2:17 - 5:03
2:45 duration655 words

AI's Role in Enterprise and Consumer Applications

">> It's hard to to actually think back two years ago. At that point in time, of course, chat GPT uh 3 had launched. I think chat GPT4 had also launched, but it was all just text and and imaging and so..."

3
5:03 - 8:43
3:39 duration871 words

Emerging AI Trends and Investment Strategies

"there's a if anybody knows Maslo's hierarchy of needs like you know this is like this philosophical tome of what is it that humans need at the base of the pyramid you know people would joke is Wi-Fi. ..."

4
8:43 - 14:41
5:58 duration1324 words

Traditional Software Going AI Native

"very very good question. It's not like OpenAI just wants to be this backend layer for everything. they have a leading consumer app like they just launched arguably a competitor to Tik Tok. Um so Micro..."

5
14:41 - 17:05
2:23 duration517 words

Software Eating Labor

"uh which I am personally most excited about is where new categories are emerging where labor is is software and there's no bingo board for this at all. And the reason why is because there weren't soft..."

6
17:05 - 21:33
4:28 duration954 words

Case Study: Eve

"happening in legal AI. You know, just given how document intensive the industry is, there's tons of applications for LLMs in the space. Most of what you've probably heard are around companies like Har..."

7
21:33 - 24:46
3:13 duration668 words

Building Defensible Moats

"intelligence and what patterns have you seen around in which apps actually graduate to being essential? >> Yeah, I mean what one of the distinctions that I often draw is this notion of um differentiat..."

8
24:46 - 31:53
7:06 duration1704 words

Case Study: Salient

"salient is is in the EVE mold. Um and I know we also had a question about like you know what is the societal impact of everybody losing their job. Like I don't think that's actually going to happen ve..."

9
31:53 - 40:23
8:29 duration1875 words

The Walled Garden

"good way to kind of go into theme three here. Um, which I'm I'm very excited about. And I I call this the walled garden. Um, and this is really important today because if you look at like take take a ..."

10
40:23 - 49:40
9:16 duration2060 words

Incumbents vs. Startups

"can I pause you here um in part because you know the last era of investing you gave a great framework in the world a great framework for thinking about the battle between startups and incumbents and y..."

11
49:40 - 53:33
3:53 duration903 words

AI Roll-ups

"white collar services AI roll-ups, i.e. fully verticalized software plus services companies that are popping up. >> Yeah. So, um I wrote an article about this two years ago. I called it Barbarians at ..."

12
53:33 - 56:03
2:29 duration484 words

Consumer AI Applications

"because all of these things that we're talking about, they also apply to consumer. Um so um so maybe with that, why don't we talk why and how this applies to consumer. >> Great. Actually, if we're goi..."

13
56:03 - 57:06
1:03 duration219 words

Model Aggregation Strategy

"I think this is an important slide as well and an important concept um because a very fair question is well why aren't either labs or um sort of big tech um big tech who have real model efforts like G..."

14
57:06 - 1:06:47
9:41 duration2239 words

Investment Process & Team

"everybody's heard this this framework before but our job is to find pick and win deals and then once we win deals to help these companies actually achieve their objectives and and most importantly don..."

15
1:06:47 - 1:09:32
2:44 duration593 words

Q&A: Customer Retention & Enterprise Sales

"customer retention to date on AI native companies and then just a scale of spending required for enterprise sales uh for these type of companies. Maybe David or or Anish, you want to take this one? I ..."