Can AI Fix Housing and Healthcare Affordability?

The a16z Show

a16z

Science, Innovation, Business, Entrepreneurship, Culture, Disruption, Software Eating The World, Technology

4.4 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 21 August 2025

⏱️ 39 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Housing and healthcare make up nearly half of household spending, yet both sectors are riddled with inefficiency and rising costs. In this episode, Erik Torenberg is joined by a16z Growth partner Alex Immerman and Minna Song and Tony Stoyanov, cofounders of EliseAI, to discuss why they’re tackling these critical industries and how AI can transform everything from leasing and maintenance to patient scheduling and compliance. The conversation covers: Why the U.S. is 5 million housing units short — and how technology can help unlock existing supply How automation can cut waste, reduce labor costs, and improve affordability What fully autonomous buildings might look like, and how that model could extend to healthcare This is about the costs that touch every household, and the role AI might play in finally bringing them down.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	We're about 5 million housing units short of what we actually need in the country.
0:06.0	Our goal is to enable fully autonomous buildings.
0:09.0	An entire portfolio has the ability to run core operations without requiring human intervention at all.
0:17.0	Housing and healthcare are the biggest expenses that people have.
0:25.5	It's pretty self-evident that technology makes the experience better for everyone and brings down costs.
0:27.3	And more people should be working on it.
0:34.0	Elise AI is taking on two of the biggest and most expensive challenges we face, housing and healthcare.
0:38.4	Joining me today are my colleague Alex Imerman from our growth team, along with Elise A.I's co-founder's Minna Song and Tony Stoyanov. We explore why these industries have resisted
0:44.2	technological change, how AI can cut costs and inefficiencies, and the vision Minna and Tony are
0:49.7	building toward, a future with more affordable, accessible services. Let's get into it.
0:57.7	We're honored to announce our latest investment in Elise AI. Minna, Tony, welcome to the podcast.
1:03.1	Welcome to the portfolio. Thank you.
1:05.1	Well, do you guys give us a brief background or give the audience a brief background on
1:08.6	why Elise AI, why housing, why health care?
1:18.6	We wanted to use AI to solve real world problems. And housing and health care are the biggest expenses that people have. They eat up about 42% of what a typical household makes. And nationally,
1:26.7	these sectors make up about 40% of the entire GDP.
1:30.8	So it's pretty obvious that we need to figure out how to cut waste in these industries.
1:37.1	It was pretty crazy to us that not enough people were working on these problems.
1:42.7	Top technology people, for example,
1:44.3	are not asking the hard questions about
1:46.2	how can we actually fix it.
1:48.3	It's just sort of an accepted tax that we all pay.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from a16z, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of a16z and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.