Reading up on Andreessen Horowitz

a16z’s State of Markets II shows tech drove ~76% of S&P 500 earnings growth in 1H’26, hardware and AI infrastructure are rising, and software faces a ‘prove‑it’ phase.

Forward deployed engineers should work as product-team extensions, turning field‑level problem solving into platform improvements by capturing customer nouns, verbs, and provenance.

AI shifts technology from saving time to enabling people to spend it making things, turning consumption into creation and deepening personal expression.

Technological progress has stagnated as society lost its ability to imagine novel frontiers and founders now chase institutionalized narratives rather than deep personal conviction in technology.

The US must treat space as a warfighting domain, adopting first-principles strategies and commercial innovation to counter adversaries like China and Russia.

Young founders are ending relationships to focus on their AI startups, driven by the belief that the AI boom demands total dedication.

Software companies must either accelerate revenue growth by 10 points with new AI products or rebuild for 40%+ true operating margins, with no viable middle path.

The author argues that if advanced AI is a strategic technology comparable to nuclear weapons, its military use must be controlled by national governments, not private corporations like Anthropic.

ChatGPT still dominates consumer AI, but Gemini and Claude are closing the gap, while agentic tools and embedded AI features are reshaping how consumers interact with the technology.

A hacker breached Doublespeed, an a16z-backed startup, revealing it operates a phone farm of AI-generated accounts to covertly promote products on TikTok without disclosure.