What makes a startup worth acquiring when software has never been easier to build? Salesforce’s John Somorjai says the answer goes well beyond technology: the best acquisitions can accelerate a product roadmap, bring in exceptional talent, and put a startup in front of 15,000 Salesforce sales reps almost overnight.

John joins a16z General Partner Alex Immerman to unpack the thinking behind nearly $100 billion in acquisitions during his tenure, from Slack and MuleSoft to a new generation of AI-native companies. They discuss Salesforce’s build-versus-buy framework, why outcome-based pricing is replacing seats in parts of enterprise software, and what founders should consider when deciding whether to sell.

John also shares what can kill a deal during diligence, why he thinks parts of today’s venture market are overvalued, and how Salesforce Ventures is expanding from enterprise software into frontier AI and robotics.

Resources:

Follow John Somorjai: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnsomorjai/

Follow Alex Immerman: https://x.com/aleximm

Learn more about Salesforce Ventures: https://salesforceventures.com/

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AI is moving finance from reconciling what happened last month to helping decide what the business should do next. Figma CFO Praveer Melwani argues that the best finance teams are becoming builders themselves, automating repetitive work so they can spend more time understanding customers, running experiments, and shaping strategy.

Praveer joins a16z’s Seema Amble and Ivan Makarov to share what that shift looks like inside Figma, from collections and expense analysis to M&A diligence, where the corp dev team now uses AI to prototype products and simulate how Figma leaders might challenge an investment memo. They discuss why AI “slop” is a real risk, how Figma decides what to build versus buy, and why successful internal experiments eventually need a centralized systems layer to turn one-off agents into reliable infrastructure.

They also get into what this means for hiring the next generation of finance leaders. Praveer’s bar isn’t simply whether someone can use AI. It’s whether they can understand the business, interrogate the output, communicate clearly, and use automation without outsourcing their thinking.

Resources:

Figma: https://www.figma.com/

You Need a New CFO: https://www.a16z.news/p/you-need-a-new-cfo 

Follow Praveer Melwani on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/praveer-melwani/ 

Follow Seema Amble on X: https://x.com/seema_amble

Follow Ivan Makarov on X: https://x.com/IvanoMakSF

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Will we have one AI assistant that does everything, or an entire network of agents that know different parts of our lives? David Pawlan, creator of Assistant Benchmark, returns with Anish Acharya and Josh Elman to take stock of how quickly the agent landscape has changed.

David has now tested more than 140 AI assistants, and they unpack what separates them, from memory and judgment to trust, shopping, and social experiences.

They also explore what happens when agents start talking to each other, how they could create new kinds of social networks and serendipity, and why the most compelling agents may ultimately do more than save time. They could become a kind of secret superpower.

Resources:

Follow David Pawlan: https://x.com/DavidPawlan

Follow Josh Elman: https://x.com/joshelma

Follow Anish Acharya on X: https://x.com/illscience

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If you could do only three things for your health, what should they be? Andrew Huberman’s answer is surprisingly straightforward: get bright light shortly after waking, resistance train, and make the sleep you can get as high-quality as possible.

Andrew joins a16z Partner Daisy Wolf to walk through the protocols he actually follows, from exercise and nutrition to meditation, supplements, and locking his social media phone in a box. He also explains why optimizing every health protocol can be counterproductive if it gets in the way of the rest of your life.

And for founders, Andrew makes a different case: identify the hours when your brain does its best work and protect them. They discuss cognitive performance, meditation, sustainable workloads, and emerging neurotechnology that could help us control transitions between sleep, focus, and recovery. 

Resources:

Huberman Lab :https://www.hubermanlab.com/

Follow Andrew Huberman: https://www.youtube.com/@hubermanlab

Follow Daisy Wolf: https://x.com/daisydwolf

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What does it take to build robots that can actually work in factories and warehouses? Tutor Intelligence CEO Josh Gruenstein argues robotics is a systems problem spanning AI, hardware, manufacturing, and the work itself.

Josh joins a16z General Partners Martin Casado and Raghu Raghuram to explain Tutor’s approach: deploy robots into real businesses, use human “tutors” when needed, and turn that work into training data that makes the robots more capable.

They discuss Tutor’s 100-robot data factory, robots starting at roughly $16 an hour, advances in spatial reasoning, and what flexible robotic labor could mean for American manufacturing and the physical economy.

Resources:

Follow Josh Gruenstein on X: https://x.com/joshgruenstein 

Follow Martin Casado on X: https://x.com/martin_casado

Follow Raghu Raghuram on X: https://x.com/RaghuRaghuram

Learn more about Tutor Intelligence:https://tutorintelligence.com/ 

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Can relentless optimization create as much value as breakthrough invention? Bending Spoons CEO Luca Ferrari argues that radical innovation can produce extraordinary outcomes, but systematic improvement can be more dependable, especially when paired with a model designed to compound over decades.

Speaking with a16z General Partner Anish Acharya at Wave by Vento, Luca explains how Bending Spoons acquires technology companies, integrates them onto a shared platform, improves their economics, and reinvests the resulting cash into new acquisitions. They discuss the tradeoffs between growth and profitability, how to use debt without putting the company at risk, and why long-term thinking can create an advantage.

They also debate whether AI really threatens SaaS, why moats like brand, proprietary data, network effects, and switching costs still matter, and how Bending Spoons is already using AI across coding, customer support, and data analysis.

Resources:

Recorded at Wave by Vento.

Luca Ferrari on LinkedIn: https://it.linkedin.com/in/luca-ferrari-12418318

Follow Anish Acharya on X: https://x.com/illscience

Learn more about Bending Spoons: https://bendingspoons.com/

Wave by Vento: https://wavebyvento.com/

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What if finding your next job, co-founder, or collaborator depended less on a resume and more on who is willing to vouch for you? Cosign is building a professional network around those signals, with the longer-term goal of giving AI agents access to the relationship and reputation data that traditional networks keep locked away.

a16z New Media’s David Booth and Dhruv Gupta join MTS to introduce the Cosign Awards, which recognize standout operators, companies, and products based on nominations from the people who know their work. They also unpack the bigger idea behind Cosign: mapping the people and relationships that rarely show up in public data, then making that graph accessible to both humans and agents.

Looking ahead, they imagine professional networking where your personal agent can talk directly to a company’s agent, determine whether there’s a potential fit, and only bring the opportunity to you when there’s a genuine “coincidence of intent.”

Resources:

Follow David Booth on X: https://x.com/david__booth 

Follow Dhruv Gupta on X: https://x.com/droovg 

Cosign: https://cosign.co

Cosign Awards: https://cosign.co/awards

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What happens when AI makes legal work cheap enough to take cases lawyers couldn't afford to touch before? Eve CEO Jay Madheswaran argues that AI won't just cut costs for law firms. It could expand access to legal representation by making an entirely new class of cases economically viable.

Jay joins a16z General Partner Alex Rampell to explain how Eve is automating plaintiff law from the first client call through settlement, and why some firms are already using it to increase the number of clients each attorney can manage from roughly 100 to 500.

They also discuss how AI could shift lawyers toward higher-value advocacy, why agents may eventually negotiate with other agents, and what happens to the legal system when bringing a case becomes dramatically cheaper.

Resources:

Follow Jay Madheswaran on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jayanth1/

Follow Alex Rampell on X: https://x.com/arampell

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America’s defense, energy, manufacturing, and robotics booms are increasingly becoming one story: the rebuilding of the country’s industrial base. This year’s AD50 highlights the companies building across that stack, from critical materials and factories to the systems they ultimately power.

a16z’s Erin Price-Wright and Connor Love join Elena Burger to unpack what has changed. They discuss how defense demand can help finance manufacturing capacity that ultimately serves much larger commercial markets, why AI is changing the economics of American factories, and how a new generation of founders is applying lessons from SpaceX, Tesla, Anduril, and Palantir to mining, energy, manufacturing, and defense. 

They also make the case that these companies are no longer simply important to America. With private capital increasingly willing to fund physical infrastructure and production before government demand is guaranteed, they can become some of the most valuable companies in the world.

Resources:

Explore the AD50 : https://www.a16z.news/p/ad-50-2026-production-is-deterrence

Follow Erin Price-Wright: https://x.com/espricewright 

Follow Connor Love on X: https://x.com/ConnorLoveCA 

Follow Elena Burger on X: https://x.com/VirtualElena 

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Mark Cuban thinks AI could transform healthcare, but it won’t fix opaque prices and broken incentives on its own. His starting point for employers: run every benefits contract through AI and ask where you’re getting ripped off.

Mark joins a16z General Partner Julie Yoo and Erik Torenberg to discuss what he’s learned building Cost Plus Drugs, why trust is its core product, and how greater transparency could put pressure on healthcare costs.

They also explore where AI can help, what personalized medicine could look like, how the role of doctors may change, and why Mark believes founders should use AI to learn, not as an excuse to stop thinking.

Resources:

Follow Mark Cuban on X: https://x.com/mcuban 

Follow Julie Yoo: https://x.com/julesyoo 

Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company: https://costplusdrugs.com/

Cost Plus Wellness: https://costpluswellness.com/

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What should school look like if AI can help students learn dramatically faster? Alpha School founder Joe Liemandt argues the answer isn’t to fill the extra time with more academics, but to redesign school around the skills traditional classrooms struggle to teach: agency, teamwork, entrepreneurship, communication, and doing hard things.

Joe joins Erik Torenberg and Horowitz and Andreessen Academy co-founder Gagan Biyani to discuss Alpha’s model, where students spend two hours a day on core academics and the rest developing real-world skills through projects. They explore what that approach can teach higher education, why motivation may matter more than curriculum, and how HAA is applying similar principles to college-age students by putting building, relationships, and real-world experience at the center of the learning experience. 

They also discuss what parents need to believe before choosing a new educational model, why Joe expects AI to drive an explosion in entrepreneurship, and why the most important question for students may not be which field is safest from AI, but what they care enough about to build. 

Resources:

Learn more about Horowitz and Andreessen Academy: https://www.theacademysf.com/ 

Learn more about Alpha School: https://alpha.school/joe-liemandt-and-the-future-of-education/ 

Follow Joe Liemandt on X: https://x.com/jliemandt 

Follow Gagan Biyani: on X https://x.com/gaganbiyani 

Follow Erik Torenberg on X: https://x.com/eriktorenberg

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