Artificial intelligence is changing everything from art to enterprise IT, and a16z is watching all of it with a close eye. This podcast features discussions wit...
Reasoning Models Are Remaking Professional Services
In this episode of AI + a16z, a16z partner Alex Immerman sits down with Hebbia founder and CEO George Sivulka to discuss the potential for reasoning models and AI agents to supercharge knowledge-worker productivity — and the global economy along with it. As George explains, his customers are already saving significant time and and effort on important, but monotonous, tasks, and improved models paired with savvy users will continue to reshape how industries including finance, law, and other professional services operate.Follow everyone on X:George SivulkaAlex Immerman
Check out everything a16z is doing with artificial intelligence here, including articles, projects, and more podcasts.
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Data Management for Enterprise LLMs
In this episode of AI + a16z, Fivetran cofounder and CEO George Fraser and a16z partner Guido Appenzeller discuss how LLMs fit into the data management picture within large enterprises. In order to take advantage of a potentially revolutionary technology, organizations don't need to rip out their existing infrastructure, but they do need to rethink their data hygiene so language models can understand it.Follow everyone on X:George FraserGuido AppenzellerDerrick Harris
Check out everything a16z is doing with artificial intelligence here, including articles, projects, and more podcasts.
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From NLP to LLMs: The Quest for a Reliable Chatbot
In this episode of AI + a16z, a16z General Partner Martin Casado and Rasa cofounder and CEO Alan Nichol discuss the past, present, and future of AI agents and chatbots. Alan shares his history working to solve this problem with traditional natural language processing (NLP), expounds on how large language models (LLMs) are helping to dull the many sharp corners of natural-language interactions, and explains how pairing them with inflexible business logic is a great combination.Learn more:Task-Oriented Dialogue with In-Context LearningGoEX: Perspectives and Designs Towards a Runtime for Autonomous LLM ApplicationCALM SummitFollow everyone on X:Alan NicholMartin Casado
Check out everything a16z is doing with artificial intelligence here, including articles, projects, and more podcasts.
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Best of the Year: Building AI Companies
A 2024 highlight reel, featuring founders sharing their insights, advice, and experiences building AI companies — from foundation-model labs to vertical applications. Topics include:Building AI tools for developersGetting into AI as a systems expertThe researcher-to-founder journeyFounding AI companies in specific industriesEarly lessons from selling AI agentsAnd moreCompanies include:AmbienceAnyscaleBlack Forest LabsCommandZeroDatabricksDecagonIdeogramInngestReplicateSocket
Check out everything a16z is doing with artificial intelligence here, including articles, projects, and more podcasts.
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Can AI Agents Finally Fix Customer Support?
In this episode of the AI + a16z podcast, Decagon cofounder/CEO Jesse Zhang and a16z partner Kimberly Tan discuss how LLMs are reshaping customer support, the strong market demand for AI agents, and how AI agents give startups a a new pricing model to help disrupt incumbents.Here's an excerpt of Jesse explaining how conversation-based pricing can win over customers who are used to traditional seat-based pricing:"Our view on this is that, in the past, software is based per seat because it's roughly scaled based on the number of people that can take advantage of the software."With most AI agents, the value . . . doesn't really scale in terms of the number of people that are maintaining it; it's just the amount of work output. . . . The pricing that you want to provide has to be a model where the more work you do, the more that gets paid. "So for us, there's two obvious ways to do that: you can pay per conversation, or you can pay per resolution. One fun learning for us has been that most people have opted into the per-conversation model . . . It just creates a lot more simplicity and predictability.. . ."It's a little bit tricky for incumbents if they're trying to launch agents because it just cannibalizes their seat-based model. . . . Incumbents have less risk tolerance, naturally, because they have a ton of customers. And if they're iterating quickly and something doesn't go well, that's a big loss for them. Whereas, younger companies can always iterate a lot faster, and the iteration process just inherently leads to better product. . . "We always want to pride ourselves on shipping speed, quality of the product, and just how hardcore our team is in terms of delivering things."Learn more:RIP to RPA: The Rise of Intelligent AutomationBig Ideas in Tech for 2025Follow everyone on X:Jesse ZhangKimberly TanDerrick Harris
Check out everything a16z is doing with artificial intelligence here, including articles, projects, and more podcasts.
Artificial intelligence is changing everything from art to enterprise IT, and a16z is watching all of it with a close eye. This podcast features discussions with leading AI engineers, founders, and experts, as well as our general partners, about where the technology and industry are heading.