The a16z Show

Andy Jassy × Ben Horowitz × Erik Torenberg

Amazon expects about $220 billion of 2026 CapEx, yet AWS capacity is sold out for 2026, largely for 2027, and partly for 2028; AWS AI has exceeded a $25 billion revenue run rate.Data centers require investment roughly two years before monetization, pressuring free cash flow; broader enterprise inference adoption also hinges on costs Jassy still calls an order of magnitude too high.

David George × Gavin Baker

AI demand accelerated through July and August, with usage concentrated among possibly sub-10 million heavy users and no leader identifying a worsening quantitative metric.Nebius suggests nine-to-ten-month paybacks on $50B-per-gigawatt builds, supported by 50-60% customer prepayments; undersupply through ’28 could lift token prices, while shifting capacity to training could cut lab revenue from $480B to $120B.

Ben Horowitz × Martin Casado × Raghu Raghuram × Erik Torenberg

a16z’s new AI infrastructure fund captures a founder migration into hardware, with top-founder hardware pitches rising from roughly 3–5% to “north of 20% or 30%.”Hyperscaler capex, booked-out GPUs and resale premiums support opportunities across chips, power and cooling, while grid shortages, regulation and uncontrolled agent spending remain constraints.

Marc Andreessen × Erik Torenberg

Andreessen sees AI three years into an 80-year revolution, with customer revenue validating unusually rapid adoption across an already-built global distribution network.Falling token costs, competing chips, smaller models, and US-China rivalry could expand demand dramatically, while state regulation remains a major unresolved risk.