If you ask me, what is the one area that AI has surprised you?

It's encoding. I've been developing my whole life, and I would never have guessed it'd be this good.

You have mentioned that some of the energy that you're seeing in AI really reminds you of the 90s.com boom.

This feels a lot like early 96, but I don't think we're anywhere close to a late 90s level bubble. No, I think that could come. The current technology wave is you can actually deploy capital and you can get revenue on the other side of it. And I think that is what the market is trying to normalize. But there's a true value being created in this AI. And I think that if money's not following it, it's going to miss the greatest super cycle in the last 20 years.

How would you describe your investing style today? What is your filter? I used to think from

company out. I've stopped that. Now I think only from markets it. The reality is the market

creates the company, in most cases, not the other way around. And so I always start with what is the market, and then I ask the question, is just the right founder for this market? It's clearly not perfect. And in fact, you'll be wrong a lot of the time. But I would submit that if you invest in this way, you will be right in a way that's better than market norm. Today, we're replaying a conversation from The Generalist with A16Z general partner

Martine Casado.

Martin shares his perspective on the AI boom, why he believes we're still in the 1996 moment

of the cycle, how a market-first lens shapes his investing, and why he's skeptical of AGI-centric

framing.

He also reflects on his path from game engines and

simulations to pioneering software-defined networking and investing at the frontier of AI and

infrastructure. They close with why AI coding could be a multi-trillion dollar opportunity,

how A16D evolved from a small generalist firm into a specialized organization,

concerns about Chinese dominance and open source AI models, and how

World Labs is tackling the 3D representation problem with implications for robotics in VR.

Hey, I'm Mario, and this is the generalist podcast. As the saying goes, the future is already here. It's just not evenly distributed. Each week, I sit down with the founders, investors, and visionaries living in the future to help you see what's coming, understand it more clearly, and capitalize on it. Today, I'm speaking with Martine Casado, a general partner at Andresen Horowitz and leader

of the firm's infrastructure practice.

Martine has had one of the most fascinating journeys in Silicon Valley, from writing game

engines for budget video games in the 90s to selling his startup for approximately $1.3 billion

in 2012, and now investing in the next

...