20VC: a16z's Martin Casado on Anthropic vs OpenAI: Where Value Accrues | Cursor vs Replit vs Lovable: Who Wins and Who Loses | The One Sin in AI Investing | Why Open Source is a National Security Risk with China

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

The Twenty Minute VC

Finance, Venturecapital, Tech News, News, Siliconvalley, Technology, Investing, Startups, Business

4.4 • 637 Ratings

🗓️ 28 July 2025

⏱️ 71 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Martin Casado is a General Partner @ a16z where he leads the firms $1.25BN infrastructure fund. At a16z, Martin has led investments in companies like Cursor, dbt Labs, and Fivetran to name a few. Before joining a16z, he co-founded Nicira, acquired by VMware for $1.26B. At VMware, he served as CTO of Networking. Widely regarded as a visionary in enterprise infrastructure, Martin has helped shape the modern cloud computing stack.

Agenda:

00:00 – Analysis of Current AI Investment Landscape

04:45 – Will Anthropic Kill the AI App Layer?

09:20 – “The Oligopoly Is Coming—Just Like Cloud”

12:50 – Are AI Models Actually Terrible Venture Investments?

15:40 – Why it is BS to Put Down AI Apps for Having Temporary Revenue

21:30 – “Open Source Is a National Security Weapon—And We're Losing”

26:40 – “Have the Foundation Models of the Future All Been Founded Already”

34:30 – Why it is BS to Denigrate AI Apps for Having Low Margins

38:40 – Does AI Make 1x Engineers 10x or 10x Becomes 100x

44:10 – “We’re All Dead Wrong About AI and Job Loss”

50:30 – “The Only Sin in Venture: Backing the Wrong Winner”

55:10 – What People Think They Know About Wealth But Do Not

Transcript

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0:00.0	There's only been one sin, and that one sin is zero-sum thinking.
0:05.0	Oh, is this defensible? Oh, will this layer get margin? Will this layer get value?
0:10.0	And the answer has kind of been unilaterally, yes. The answer has been every layer has gotten
0:15.4	value. Every layer has winners. These markets are so large, and they're growing so fast. We're actually seeing brand effects
0:22.8	take place. In this phase of model scaling, a lot of the approaches to scaling don't generalize.
0:30.9	This gives a ton of room for the application developers to build their own models. I think that right now, open source is
0:40.1	most dangerous because China is better at it than we are. This is 20VC with me, Harry Stebbings. Now
0:47.9	today is an incredible show with one of my favorite guests. I've had him on before, but I thought
0:52.3	there was no better person for this moment in time.
0:55.6	So much crazy shit is happening in AI. And I wanted his thoughts and clarity. Martin Casado,
1:00.9	general partner at Andresen, where he leads the firm's $1.25 billion infrastructure fund. Now at
1:06.7	Andreessen, he's led investments in companies like Cursor, DBT Labs, 5Tran, and many more
1:12.4	incredible businesses.
1:13.8	But before we dive into the show today, I love seeing the team come together to make this
1:18.0	show happen.
1:18.8	What I don't love is trying to keep track of all the information, the data and the projects
1:23.0	that we're working on across dozens of platforms, products and tools.
1:26.4	That's why we use Coda, the all-in-one
1:29.2	collaborative workspace that's helped 50,000 teams all over the world get on the same page. Offering
1:35.3	the flexibility of docs with the structure of spreadsheets, Coda facilitates deeper teamwork
1:40.4	and quicker creativity, and their turnkey AI solution, the intelligence of Coda brain,
1:45.7	is a game changer. Powered by Grammally, Coda is entering a new phase of innovation and expansion,
	...

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