At Cisco, Mike Volpi's team did 70+ acquisitions which became half of the company's revenue during the internet build-out. Now he's watching AI drive another infrastructure boom, and he thinks this cycle is even more compelling. His view: the infrastructure being built will remain useful even if some of its owners change. Hanabi Capital GP Mike Volpi joins a16z's Raghu Raghuram and Guido Appenzeller to discuss lessons from Cisco's acquisition machine, Nvidia's dominance, the opening for custom AI chips, how AI is changing data center networking, why older GPUs are holding their value, and more. 00:00 Intro 00:53 The internet buildout vs. the AI buildout 09:29 Financing the buildout, and why GPUs are holding their value 14:31 Cisco's M&A playbook, and advice for Nvidia 22:27 Making acquisitions actually integrate 25:32 When founders should sell, and how deals really happen 31:58 Mapping today's AI infrastructure 38:02 Will we see more competitive AI silicon? 43:45 Why Cisco's boom ended 46:08 Rethinking data center networking for AI 53:46 Why this is the best time to be investing YouTube: @mavolpi @RaghuRaghuram @appenz

a16z's first employee Scott Kupor on how Michael Ovitz's CAA playbook became the model for a16z: "When you would go show up for a pitch at CAA in 1990 where I think they had like 90% market share, they would sit around a table, and Michael would introduce you as Robert Redford and say, 'Look, meet my colleague who does nothing other than radio deals. Here's my expert in radio deals. Here's my expert in international. Here's my expert in books.'" "And we basically took the same model to the VC world. The VC world was a lot like that. You had a one-to-one relationship with John Doerr, who was fantastic at what he did." "As the domains grew, the expertise needed just continued to grow." "Let's hire GPs who are functional domain experts in the particular areas of investing they want, and then let's surround them with this phalanx of somebody who all they do all day long is manage CFO relationships, or CEO relationships, or VPs of engineering, somebody who all they do is government relations, or business development." @skupor @davidsenra

AI game development is exploding on Roblox: - An growing share of top games were launched in the last 90 days - Roblox MCP daily users are exploding - An increasing fraction of game development time is spent using AI - Asset uploads are shooting up In other words, people are using AI to make games, and other people are actually playing them. More charts:

In 1937, San Francisco finished the Golden Gate Bridge, initially derided as "the bridge that couldn't be built," ahead of schedule and under budget. Nearly a century later, the same city couldn't build a single public toilet without exorbidant costs and years of delay. Across America, communities face the same dysfunction: stalled factories, delayed energy projects, and crumbling infrastructure. We should be building faster and more safely than ever before. Instead, we struggle to deliver the basics. The problem: our system rewards process over results. A growing bipartisan consensus offers a chance to change that. a16z's Matt Cronin on the 5 priorities bipartisan legislation must address to get America building again:

“Founded by Ben and Felicia Horowitz, the Paid in Full Foundation honors the hip-hop immortals whose artistic contributions far outweigh the financial remuneration they received in return.” “As Ben described Eric B. & Rakim’s debut masterpiece, the foundation’s namesake Paid in Full: ‘I bought it for $10 and got at least $5 million worth of value out of it. It needed to be paid back.’” “Each honoree receives a five-year grant with no strings attached. Inspired by Quincy Jones’ work with the Jazz Foundation, the grants have allowed past recipients, among them Rakim, Scarface, George Clinton, Roxanne Shanté, Grandmaster Caz, Kool Moe Dee, Grand Puba, and Kool G Rap, to purchase homes, pay off medical bills, and finish long-delayed creative projects.” “Of course, a few grants a year can’t repay an entire generation, but they’re a start. Paid in Full refuses to let these cultural giants languish in our midst, and its grants have fundamentally changed the artists’ lives, though still not as much as the artists changed ours.” Full piece from acclaimed music journalist Jeff Weiss on the Paid in Full Foundation’s 2026 Hip Hop Grandmaster Awards: @Passionweiss

Think different, CapEx edition: Since Q1 2023, Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta have increased CapEx 5-8x Meanwhile, Apple now spends 20% less than it did before the AI boom Charts of the Week:

Salesforce's John Somorjai has spent more than 20 years doing deals for Marc Benioff, from Slack to six rounds of Anthropic, and runs a venture arm that has backed more than 750 companies. His playbook is finding great technology that's starved for distribution and plugging it into 15,000 sales reps. Salesforce piloted Fin on its own help site, where it went live in 14 days and now handles over 40% of the traffic, resolving 65% without a human. John joins a16z's Alex Immerman to discuss why Slack revenue is up almost 3x since the acquisition, how strong revenue can hide the churn that kills deals, the pen test that got into a CEO's laptop, and why robotics is where he's most excited to invest. 0:58 How Marc Benioff spots what to buy 3:48 The 3 tests for every acquisition 5:17 Salesforce's model as AI cuts seats 8:23 Fin resolves 65% with no human 10:32 The power of 15,000 sales reps 14:22 Founders who became product chiefs 17:34 Build vs buy when code is cheap 20:27 Why Salesforce bought Fin 22:58 Why Slack is perfect for AI agents 28:19 Salesforce Ventures' robotics bets 35:46 Why he's wary of new CRM startups 37:53 Why $10B+ startups have few buyers 39:32 Why he backed Anthropic six times 41:50 Red flags that kill acquisitions 44:27 The pen test that sank a deal 46:01 Growing up with a scientist father YouTube: @jsomorjai @salesforce @aleximm

Tutor Intelligence co-founder and CEO Josh Gruenstein is putting AI robots to work in American factories and warehouses, taking on the back-breaking jobs they can't hire for. Tutor builds its robots in Massachusetts and charges by the hour, with no upfront cost. When the AI gets stuck, a human "tutor" takes over and teaches it the task, creating training data along the way. Josh joins a16z's Martin Casado and Raghu Raghuram to discuss how Tutor goes from a first sales call to a working robot in about three months, why so many robot startups died building for a single customer, why anyone will be able to start a business in the physical world, and a whole lot more. 0:50 Deploy robots, then build the data 2:50 Why smart robots aren't enough 4:38 The ultimate systems problem 6:45 Why robot companies go vertical 9:07 How remote humans tutor robots 11:00 Will robots outgrow their tutors? 14:54 How AI labs sped up robotics 16:57 Meet Cassie and Sonny 20:55 What factory work actually looks like 23:18 A robot for $16 an hour 25:51 When robots become coworkers 29:04 Why robot startups keep dying 31:21 When 1% cheaper flips a market 34:52 Robots cost more to run than to buy 38:18 China's automation bet may backfire 42:02 Real-world RL on a 100-robot fleet YouTube: @joshgruenstein @tutorintel @martin_casado @RaghuRaghuram

a16z's Erin Price-Wright says factory technicians can now retool production lines with AI in 20 minutes, a job that used to take an outside integrator 3 months: "Historically, if you're setting up a line with a lot of automation, you really need to be producing a lot of one single thing. That's how you get the cost down, and how you justify investing in a pretty bespoke manufacturing line." "But what we're seeing across our portfolio is that manufacturing technicians themselves have the intuition, and now the software tools, to change the economics of producing low-volume, high-mix on the line." "A manufacturing technician, not necessarily someone with a college degree or who's studied software engineering, can now use these tools to reprogram and reconfigure their lines on the fly, because they understand the manufacturing process." "Instead of calling a systems integrator, which takes 3 months and hundreds of thousands of dollars to reconfigure a line, you can have a manufacturing engineer use Claude and do that in 20 minutes. That's been a real game changer." @espricewright

The American Dynamism 50 is a16z's annual list of companies building for America's future. This year's edition covers the industrial base end to end, from the inputs that come out of the ground to factories that make things and systems that deter conflict. a16z's Erin Price-Wright and Connor Love join Elena Burger to break down this year's list and its theme, Production is Deterrence, built around a simple idea: "You don't have a defense industrial base without an industrial base." 0:50 From mines to factories and systems 3:05 How the internet and nuclear was built 5:05 Drones built DJI into a robotics giant 6:50 Defense dollars pay for new factories 8:30 SpaceX and Tesla lessons on scale 10:15 How Mariana runs a mine on software 12:20 "AI cannot turn a wrench yet" 14:10 Retooling in 20 mins, not 3 months 17:45 Startups build before Pentagon asks 20:35 Why hard tech can be more valuable 24:45 The race for the biggest American flag 28:25 How defense parts unlock US robotics 32:05 The rise of the "manufacturing middle" 37:25 Anduril and SpaceX founder mafias 41:05 Private capital: USA's edge over China 46:30 The buildout must hit Middle America YouTube: @espricewright @ConnorLoveCA @VirtualElena