What a16z is actually funding (and what it's ignoring) when it comes to AI infra

Equity

TechCrunch

Entrepreneurship, Business News, News, Business, Technology

4.2 • 372 Ratings

🗓️ 4 February 2026

⏱️ 32 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Andreessen Horowitz just raised a whopping new $15 billion in funding. And a $1.7 billion chunk of that is going to its infrastructure team, the one responsible for some of its biggest, most prominent AI investments including Black Forrest Labs, Cursor, OpenAI, ElevenLabs, Ideogram, Fal and dozens of others. A16z general partner with the infra team Jennifer Li (who oversees such investments as ElevenLabs – just valued at $11 billion); Ideagram and Fal, has a clear thesis on where the team is looking to spend it’s latest chunk of cash. Today on TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Venture and Startups editor Julie Bort talked with Li about where a16z sees this AI super cycle going next, including the talent crunch hitting AI-native startups, why search infrastructure matters more than people think, and what kinds of companies are actually getting funded right now. Listen to the full episode to hear about: Where Li thinks the gaps still are when it comes to startups building an AI stack What makes the most successful AI portfolio companies different How tools like voice AI are rising in importance (yet still a bit uncomfortable to witness) The AI startups she's still searching for and is ready to fund Chapters: 00:00 Intro 01:01 Andreessen Horowitz's $1.7B infrastructure fund 05:00 Crossing the uncanny valley in AI-generated content 07:14 Agents finally becoming real in 2026 09:30 Building your first productivity agent 11:56 Why email agents aren't quite there yet 15:00 Which jobs will agents replace first? 18:05 The most unhinged opinion: Creativity belongs to humans 20:21 The limits of LLMs and the rise of world models 22:13 AI-designed chips are coming 24:00 The truth behind those viral ARR numbers 26:10 Hiring at AI speed: The talent shortage problem 28:47 The pricing mistake that became a big deal 29:21 The future of search for AI agents 30:45 Outro Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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0:00.0	Could AI help you do more of what you love? Workday is the next-gen ERP powered by AI that actually
0:06.8	knows your business. We help you handle the have-to-dos so you can focus on the can't-wait-to-dos.
0:13.2	It's a new workday. Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch's flagship podcast about
0:18.9	the business of startups. I'm TechCrunch venture editor Julie Bort, in for Rebecca Boulon, while she's at Web Summit this week.
0:25.6	TechCrunch readers have probably heard some form of agents are the future or agents are coming for our jobs.
0:32.3	But today we're going to find out where one major investor in agents and infrastructure stands on the issue.
0:44.9	Today I'm joined by Jennifer Lee, General Partner, leading infrastructure investments at
0:50.5	Andreessen Horowitz. Jennifer, welcome to the show. Hi, Julie. Thank you for having me on.
0:56.0	Yeah, well, you've got some good news that just happened to your team.
1:00.1	You guys recently raised $1.7 billion in new funds.
1:06.3	So I guess, I mean, the biggest thing I think people want to know is like, what are you going to spend it on?
1:11.3	So, and I'm curious, what are you going to spend it on in 2026 this year that you probably wouldn't
1:18.9	even have considered spending it on last year or the year before?
1:22.9	It's truly a lucky time to be alive. And we're literally in this super cycle that not just, I've never
1:29.7	seen many of the industry vendors on our team have never seen. And infrastructure is getting
1:34.4	rebuilt in real time every single layer, every step of the way. So as an infrared investor, it's
1:40.7	certainly a very, very exciting time, which is the reason why we raised 1.7 billion fund to really back infrastructure founders to go from all the way on the
1:50.1	bottom of, you know, chip design, building the real hard infrastructure that supports
1:56.2	sort of where models are going to run and the software layers, the communication layers,
2:02.4	the developer tooling layer to all the way the model layer. And all of these are our mandate
2:08.3	to really looking into the future, looking at the work clothes, looking at use cases, to see
2:14.1	where we need to retool. And the answer, honestly, is we need to retool pretty much everything
	...

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