Ben Horowitz, Martin Casado, Raghu Raghuram, and Erik Torenberg discuss the launch of a16z's new Machine Age Fund and the infrastructure buildout behind AI, from chips, memory, and networking to power, cooling, and data centers.
Why a dedicated fund now? The group argues that the bottleneck in AI is increasingly shifting from the models themselves to everything beneath them. Hyperscaler CapEx is surging, critical components are booked years in advance, and each new generation of reasoning and agents requires dramatically more compute. They unpack why this cycle looks different from previous infrastructure booms and how AI is turning problems once constrained by engineering into problems that can increasingly be attacked with capital and compute.
They also explore where the next generation of infrastructure companies could emerge, why founders are returning to hard technical problems across hardware and systems, and what it will take to rebuild the computing stack for the Machine Age.
Timestamps:
00:00 - Intro
00:50 - Introducing the Machine Age Fund
02:00 - Why Founder Interest in Hardware Just 4x'd
04:00 - How Do We Know Demand Isn't a Hype Cycle?
07:00 - Sold Out to 2028: The Unprecedented Supply Crunch
10:00 - What's Actually Bottlenecked Right Now
14:00 - Tokens, Scaling & Why There's No Natural Regulator
19:00 - Agents as a New Kind of Employee: The GrokBot Moment
25:00 - What "AI-Designed" Infrastructure Actually Looks Like
28:00 - Rack Power, Liquid Cooling & the Data Center Redesign
34:00 - 44 Gigawatts by 2028: Why Building Faster Is So Hard
38:00 - Why "Machine Age" Is the Right Name
40:00 - Won't Incumbents Like Nvidia Take Everything?
48:00 - The Founder Profile: Why Hardware Needs Experience
Resources:
Read more about the Machine Age Fund : https://www.a16z.news/p/the-machine-age-fund
Follow Ben Horowitz on X: https://x.com/bhorowitz
Follow Raghu Raghuram on X: https://x.com/RaghuRaghuram
Follow Martin Casado on X: https://x.com/martin_casado
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Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see http://a16z.com/disclosures.
