Navigating the AI Landscape: Open vs. Closed Systems

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