Call center jobs grew ~4% annually for 15 years
Now they’re shrinking 4% annually
Charts of the Week: a16z.news/p/this-week-in…
Now they’re shrinking 4% annually
Charts of the Week: a16z.news/p/this-week-in…
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Token prices keep falling and GPU rental prices keep rising
Intelligence gets cheaper, usage goes up, and a model ends up in every piece of software
Intelligence gets cheaper, usage goes up, and a model ends up in every piece of software
a16z@a16z · 16hTypeSafe AI's Diogo Almeida on why Jev is called Jev, and what cheap intelligence finally changes about software:
"It's wild that AI is so cool and software has been unchanged in 10 years... The most we can do is add a little chatbot in the side sometimes that can take actions, but not all actions."
"TypeSafe is making AI for software. We want to make AI powerful, not just for humans in the loop, but to actually build real software."
"It's about the laziness to spend 10 hours to do the five-minute task instantly and to never have to do it again. It should be an ROI decision for people who automate stuff. I would just like it to be automatable."
"I think that people will just make new kinds of work, hence the Jev in Jevons. New kinds of work once that stuff is doable."
"As we have lots of intelligence at lots of different cost and speed trade-offs, the super systems-y types will be making trade-offs. Jev's gonna be 1000x too smart for them. They just want an approximate guess to optimistically route here and there."
Martin Casado: "The good news is we get to rebuild systems again. We have a new primitive. It's kind of a new way of thinking about doing software."
@CompleteSkeptic @typesafeai @bhorowitz @martin_casado
"It's wild that AI is so cool and software has been unchanged in 10 years... The most we can do is add a little chatbot in the side sometimes that can take actions, but not all actions."
"TypeSafe is making AI for software. We want to make AI powerful, not just for humans in the loop, but to actually build real software."
"It's about the laziness to spend 10 hours to do the five-minute task instantly and to never have to do it again. It should be an ROI decision for people who automate stuff. I would just like it to be automatable."
"I think that people will just make new kinds of work, hence the Jev in Jevons. New kinds of work once that stuff is doable."
"As we have lots of intelligence at lots of different cost and speed trade-offs, the super systems-y types will be making trade-offs. Jev's gonna be 1000x too smart for them. They just want an approximate guess to optimistically route here and there."
Martin Casado: "The good news is we get to rebuild systems again. We have a new primitive. It's kind of a new way of thinking about doing software."
@CompleteSkeptic @typesafeai @bhorowitz @martin_casado
1:57 42 103 38 832 142K 356
AI deflated as much in 3 years as PCs did in 15
Cheap intelligence is what lets a model move out of the chatbot and into the software where the work happens
Cheap intelligence is what lets a model move out of the chatbot and into the software where the work happens
a16z@a16z · 16hTypeSafe AI's Diogo Almeida on why Jev is called Jev, and what cheap intelligence finally changes about software:
"It's wild that AI is so cool and software has been unchanged in 10 years... The most we can do is add a little chatbot in the side sometimes that can take actions, but not all actions."
"TypeSafe is making AI for software. We want to make AI powerful, not just for humans in the loop, but to actually build real software."
"It's about the laziness to spend 10 hours to do the five-minute task instantly and to never have to do it again. It should be an ROI decision for people who automate stuff. I would just like it to be automatable."
"I think that people will just make new kinds of work, hence the Jev in Jevons. New kinds of work once that stuff is doable."
"As we have lots of intelligence at lots of different cost and speed trade-offs, the super systems-y types will be making trade-offs. Jev's gonna be 1000x too smart for them. They just want an approximate guess to optimistically route here and there."
Martin Casado: "The good news is we get to rebuild systems again. We have a new primitive. It's kind of a new way of thinking about doing software."
@CompleteSkeptic @typesafeai @bhorowitz @martin_casado
"It's wild that AI is so cool and software has been unchanged in 10 years... The most we can do is add a little chatbot in the side sometimes that can take actions, but not all actions."
"TypeSafe is making AI for software. We want to make AI powerful, not just for humans in the loop, but to actually build real software."
"It's about the laziness to spend 10 hours to do the five-minute task instantly and to never have to do it again. It should be an ROI decision for people who automate stuff. I would just like it to be automatable."
"I think that people will just make new kinds of work, hence the Jev in Jevons. New kinds of work once that stuff is doable."
"As we have lots of intelligence at lots of different cost and speed trade-offs, the super systems-y types will be making trade-offs. Jev's gonna be 1000x too smart for them. They just want an approximate guess to optimistically route here and there."
Martin Casado: "The good news is we get to rebuild systems again. We have a new primitive. It's kind of a new way of thinking about doing software."
@CompleteSkeptic @typesafeai @bhorowitz @martin_casado
1:57 22 48 11 492 28.5K 116
TypeSafe AI's Diogo Almeida on why the boring SaaS companies are best positioned to win AI:
Ben: "When the coding agents came out, it was the SaaSpocalypse, and all their values dropped through the floor. Then when Jev came out, every SaaS company is like, 'This is the greatest thing ever.'"
Diogo: "In the SaaSpocalypse story, the story I feel has panned out really poorly is that software is very cheap and perhaps easy to replicate. I could believe the former. I could not believe the latter, because a lot of the stuff happens beneath the hood."
"I think SaaS will be one of the largest winners of the whole AI game."
"I want to work really, really well with the biggest, most boring SaaS companies because I think they're the best positioned to know what workflows to automate, what people need. That's their bread and butter."
"I'm not going to forecast anything about the financial markets. But as far as capabilities go, I think it's going to be like an inverse SaaSpocalypse. I'm so jazzed about it."
@CompleteSkeptic @typesafeai @bhorowitz @martin_casado
Ben: "When the coding agents came out, it was the SaaSpocalypse, and all their values dropped through the floor. Then when Jev came out, every SaaS company is like, 'This is the greatest thing ever.'"
Diogo: "In the SaaSpocalypse story, the story I feel has panned out really poorly is that software is very cheap and perhaps easy to replicate. I could believe the former. I could not believe the latter, because a lot of the stuff happens beneath the hood."
"I think SaaS will be one of the largest winners of the whole AI game."
"I want to work really, really well with the biggest, most boring SaaS companies because I think they're the best positioned to know what workflows to automate, what people need. That's their bread and butter."
"I'm not going to forecast anything about the financial markets. But as far as capabilities go, I think it's going to be like an inverse SaaSpocalypse. I'm so jazzed about it."
@CompleteSkeptic @typesafeai @bhorowitz @martin_casado
1:38
Diogo Almeida@CompleteSkeptic · 17hlaunched a model
accidentally served trillions of tokens a day
29.4% of the fortune 500 showed up
raised a really big series A from @a16z
it's been 3 weeks
we would like to sleep now
accidentally served trillions of tokens a day
29.4% of the fortune 500 showed up
raised a really big series A from @a16z
it's been 3 weeks
we would like to sleep now
2:26 15 28 6 355 45.8K 248
Ben Horowitz and Diogo Almeida on TypeSafe AI's "build prod, not God" approach:
Ben: "You said something there that is so unusual in today's world, which is, 'AI is really, really fun.' The company has such a different demeanor and view of AI than everybody else."
"If we had any other kind of big lab leader, they'd be trying to, even if they had joy, cover that. Your view is so different. You're like, 'No, we're going to create a way better world, and it's going to be awesome.'"
Diogo: "I think [most people in the AI world] don't get it. It's just a classifier complaint. It's an ML-level concern while everyone else is having a Jev party."
"We can do all the things that we wanted to do, and I think if you don't get developers, it'll be hard to understand what's really going on."
"I do think there's a pretty negative world painted that I obviously disagree with... The fact that AI has so much potential is what made it really tragic for me that we had not released this. So now it's a little bit of a party for me."
@CompleteSkeptic @typesafeai @bhorowitz
Ben: "You said something there that is so unusual in today's world, which is, 'AI is really, really fun.' The company has such a different demeanor and view of AI than everybody else."
"If we had any other kind of big lab leader, they'd be trying to, even if they had joy, cover that. Your view is so different. You're like, 'No, we're going to create a way better world, and it's going to be awesome.'"
Diogo: "I think [most people in the AI world] don't get it. It's just a classifier complaint. It's an ML-level concern while everyone else is having a Jev party."
"We can do all the things that we wanted to do, and I think if you don't get developers, it'll be hard to understand what's really going on."
"I do think there's a pretty negative world painted that I obviously disagree with... The fact that AI has so much potential is what made it really tragic for me that we had not released this. So now it's a little bit of a party for me."
@CompleteSkeptic @typesafeai @bhorowitz
2:00Diogo Almeida@CompleteSkeptic · 17hlaunched a model
accidentally served trillions of tokens a day
29.4% of the fortune 500 showed up
raised a really big series A from @a16z
it's been 3 weeks
we would like to sleep now
accidentally served trillions of tokens a day
29.4% of the fortune 500 showed up
raised a really big series A from @a16z
it's been 3 weeks
we would like to sleep now
2:26 12 5 0 81 25.7K 36
@a16z reposted
28 17 15 267 102K 103
TypeSafe AI's Diogo Almeida on why Jev is called Jev, and what cheap intelligence finally changes about software:
"It's wild that AI is so cool and software has been unchanged in 10 years... The most we can do is add a little chatbot in the side sometimes that can take actions, but not all actions."
"TypeSafe is making AI for software. We want to make AI powerful, not just for humans in the loop, but to actually build real software."
"It's about the laziness to spend 10 hours to do the five-minute task instantly and to never have to do it again. It should be an ROI decision for people who automate stuff. I would just like it to be automatable."
"I think that people will just make new kinds of work, hence the Jev in Jevons. New kinds of work once that stuff is doable."
"As we have lots of intelligence at lots of different cost and speed trade-offs, the super systems-y types will be making trade-offs. Jev's gonna be 1000x too smart for them. They just want an approximate guess to optimistically route here and there."
Martin Casado: "The good news is we get to rebuild systems again. We have a new primitive. It's kind of a new way of thinking about doing software."
@CompleteSkeptic @typesafeai @bhorowitz @martin_casado
"It's wild that AI is so cool and software has been unchanged in 10 years... The most we can do is add a little chatbot in the side sometimes that can take actions, but not all actions."
"TypeSafe is making AI for software. We want to make AI powerful, not just for humans in the loop, but to actually build real software."
"It's about the laziness to spend 10 hours to do the five-minute task instantly and to never have to do it again. It should be an ROI decision for people who automate stuff. I would just like it to be automatable."
"I think that people will just make new kinds of work, hence the Jev in Jevons. New kinds of work once that stuff is doable."
"As we have lots of intelligence at lots of different cost and speed trade-offs, the super systems-y types will be making trade-offs. Jev's gonna be 1000x too smart for them. They just want an approximate guess to optimistically route here and there."
Martin Casado: "The good news is we get to rebuild systems again. We have a new primitive. It's kind of a new way of thinking about doing software."
@CompleteSkeptic @typesafeai @bhorowitz @martin_casado
1:57Diogo Almeida@CompleteSkeptic · 17hlaunched a model
accidentally served trillions of tokens a day
29.4% of the fortune 500 showed up
raised a really big series A from @a16z
it's been 3 weeks
we would like to sleep now
accidentally served trillions of tokens a day
29.4% of the fortune 500 showed up
raised a really big series A from @a16z
it's been 3 weeks
we would like to sleep now
2:26 18 19 6 233 98.8K 94
We’re so excited to announce that we’re leading TypeSafe AI's Series A:
"Like @TypeSafeAI, we believe the future of SaaS and software is bright. And AI should make software more powerful, and not just automate the recreation of existing software. This spiritual alignment goes back many years. We’ve long been fans of Diogo, the founder and CEO of TypeSafe, and have resonated strongly with his vision that the true bitter lesson is not necessarily about building a new being, but returning the power to builders by giving them the primitives of intelligence then letting them unleash their imagination.
The entire a16z team is excited to partner with TypeSafe. Software continues to eat the world."
By @JenniferHli, @sarahdingwang, @martin_casado, @pmarca, and @bhorowitz
"Like @TypeSafeAI, we believe the future of SaaS and software is bright. And AI should make software more powerful, and not just automate the recreation of existing software. This spiritual alignment goes back many years. We’ve long been fans of Diogo, the founder and CEO of TypeSafe, and have resonated strongly with his vision that the true bitter lesson is not necessarily about building a new being, but returning the power to builders by giving them the primitives of intelligence then letting them unleash their imagination.
The entire a16z team is excited to partner with TypeSafe. Software continues to eat the world."
By @JenniferHli, @sarahdingwang, @martin_casado, @pmarca, and @bhorowitz
Diogo Almeida@CompleteSkeptic · 17hlaunched a model
accidentally served trillions of tokens a day
29.4% of the fortune 500 showed up
raised a really big series A from @a16z
it's been 3 weeks
we would like to sleep now
accidentally served trillions of tokens a day
29.4% of the fortune 500 showed up
raised a really big series A from @a16z
it's been 3 weeks
we would like to sleep now
2:26 21 29 12 414 71.2K 46
"Energy Capacity = Economic Capacity"
Former Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger on why America's power grid is the ceiling on growth:
"We went through 10 to 15 years where essentially I was taking coal offline at the rate I was adding renewables, and essentially the nation was flatlined in terms of overall energy capacity."
"So essentially our economic capacity as a nation, flat for fifteen years."
"Even with that, we've gone to maybe increasing our national energy capacity 4% per year. Going from essentially zero to one."
"Nuclear as base load is a fabulous thing that we want to go build more of. Unfortunately all of our renewables have deep dependencies in China."
"Energy capacity somewhat dampens how euphoric we can get on AI. Why build a new data center and buy the million GPUs if I can't power them?"
@PGelsinger @RaghuRaghuram @appenz
Former Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger on why America's power grid is the ceiling on growth:
"We went through 10 to 15 years where essentially I was taking coal offline at the rate I was adding renewables, and essentially the nation was flatlined in terms of overall energy capacity."
"So essentially our economic capacity as a nation, flat for fifteen years."
"Even with that, we've gone to maybe increasing our national energy capacity 4% per year. Going from essentially zero to one."
"Nuclear as base load is a fabulous thing that we want to go build more of. Unfortunately all of our renewables have deep dependencies in China."
"Energy capacity somewhat dampens how euphoric we can get on AI. Why build a new data center and buy the million GPUs if I can't power them?"
@PGelsinger @RaghuRaghuram @appenz
2:00a16z@a16z · 19hFormer Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger with a16z's Raghu Raghuram and Guido Appenzeller on the next wave of semiconductor innovation and the physical constraints shaping the AI buildout:
Drawing on his experience designing Intel's 386 and 486 processors, Pat explains how AI could transform chip design, but also why faster design alone won't solve the industry's biggest problems.
They examine the bottlenecks in manufacturing, memory bandwidth, advanced packaging, and power, and why today's explosion of specialized AI chips may eventually consolidate around a smaller number of architectures.
They also discuss the potential for new memory technologies, the shift from copper to optical networking, and why energy capacity could become a major constraint on AI growth.
Finally, they revisit Pat's VMware years to ask what virtualization might look like when infrastructure is built for agents rather than humans.
YouTube: youtu.be/1Q_7yU7FZ1k
1:05 Hired by Intel at 18
3:50 Arguing with Stanford professors
7:25 Will AI design the next gen chips?
8:45 Designing faster than fabs can build
11:55 Why GPUs are stuck with bad memory
13:40 Why 100 AI chips will collapse to a few
19:15 Agents make new chips cheap to run
22:10 No new memory chip since the 90s
27:20 Why 16-layer chip stacks are a fantasy
32:15 The physics that keeps memory next to compute
34:55 "I declared the death of copper"
38:05 AI traffic breaks the internet's design
42:40 "Energy capacity equals economic capacity"
46:25 The 130-year-old power war AI reopened
48:50 VMware for agents
@PGelsinger @RaghuRaghuram @appenz
Drawing on his experience designing Intel's 386 and 486 processors, Pat explains how AI could transform chip design, but also why faster design alone won't solve the industry's biggest problems.
They examine the bottlenecks in manufacturing, memory bandwidth, advanced packaging, and power, and why today's explosion of specialized AI chips may eventually consolidate around a smaller number of architectures.
They also discuss the potential for new memory technologies, the shift from copper to optical networking, and why energy capacity could become a major constraint on AI growth.
Finally, they revisit Pat's VMware years to ask what virtualization might look like when infrastructure is built for agents rather than humans.
YouTube: youtu.be/1Q_7yU7FZ1k
1:05 Hired by Intel at 18
3:50 Arguing with Stanford professors
7:25 Will AI design the next gen chips?
8:45 Designing faster than fabs can build
11:55 Why GPUs are stuck with bad memory
13:40 Why 100 AI chips will collapse to a few
19:15 Agents make new chips cheap to run
22:10 No new memory chip since the 90s
27:20 Why 16-layer chip stacks are a fantasy
32:15 The physics that keeps memory next to compute
34:55 "I declared the death of copper"
38:05 AI traffic breaks the internet's design
42:40 "Energy capacity equals economic capacity"
46:25 The 130-year-old power war AI reopened
48:50 VMware for agents
@PGelsinger @RaghuRaghuram @appenz
53:14 17 20 7 101 23.3K 38
Former Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger on getting hired at 18, designing Intel's chips while finishing his PhD, and arguing with his Stanford professors:
"I'm 16 years old. I accidentally win a scholarship. I go to tech school, skip my last year and a half of high school, and Intel comes recruiting when I'm 18 years old."
"The interviewer, he writes on his page, and I was number 12 that he interviewed that day... He says, 'Smart, aggressive, arrogant. He'll fit right in.'"
"I was engineer number four on the 386. Architect and design manager for the 486. All of that while doing my bachelor's, my master's and PhD work... Learning by day, and putting it to practice at night."
"One of the professors postulated a new carry lookahead adder design in one of my classes at Stanford. So I said, 'Well, I'm working on the 386 carry lookahead adder, so let me go try it.'"
"I come back two days later to the professor and I said, 'It doesn't work.' The next two class periods were just me and the professor arguing over why his design didn't work."
@PGelsinger @RaghuRaghuram @appenz
"I'm 16 years old. I accidentally win a scholarship. I go to tech school, skip my last year and a half of high school, and Intel comes recruiting when I'm 18 years old."
"The interviewer, he writes on his page, and I was number 12 that he interviewed that day... He says, 'Smart, aggressive, arrogant. He'll fit right in.'"
"I was engineer number four on the 386. Architect and design manager for the 486. All of that while doing my bachelor's, my master's and PhD work... Learning by day, and putting it to practice at night."
"One of the professors postulated a new carry lookahead adder design in one of my classes at Stanford. So I said, 'Well, I'm working on the 386 carry lookahead adder, so let me go try it.'"
"I come back two days later to the professor and I said, 'It doesn't work.' The next two class periods were just me and the professor arguing over why his design didn't work."
@PGelsinger @RaghuRaghuram @appenz
2:20a16z@a16z · 19hFormer Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger with a16z's Raghu Raghuram and Guido Appenzeller on the next wave of semiconductor innovation and the physical constraints shaping the AI buildout:
Drawing on his experience designing Intel's 386 and 486 processors, Pat explains how AI could transform chip design, but also why faster design alone won't solve the industry's biggest problems.
They examine the bottlenecks in manufacturing, memory bandwidth, advanced packaging, and power, and why today's explosion of specialized AI chips may eventually consolidate around a smaller number of architectures.
They also discuss the potential for new memory technologies, the shift from copper to optical networking, and why energy capacity could become a major constraint on AI growth.
Finally, they revisit Pat's VMware years to ask what virtualization might look like when infrastructure is built for agents rather than humans.
YouTube: youtu.be/1Q_7yU7FZ1k
1:05 Hired by Intel at 18
3:50 Arguing with Stanford professors
7:25 Will AI design the next gen chips?
8:45 Designing faster than fabs can build
11:55 Why GPUs are stuck with bad memory
13:40 Why 100 AI chips will collapse to a few
19:15 Agents make new chips cheap to run
22:10 No new memory chip since the 90s
27:20 Why 16-layer chip stacks are a fantasy
32:15 The physics that keeps memory next to compute
34:55 "I declared the death of copper"
38:05 AI traffic breaks the internet's design
42:40 "Energy capacity equals economic capacity"
46:25 The 130-year-old power war AI reopened
48:50 VMware for agents
@PGelsinger @RaghuRaghuram @appenz
Drawing on his experience designing Intel's 386 and 486 processors, Pat explains how AI could transform chip design, but also why faster design alone won't solve the industry's biggest problems.
They examine the bottlenecks in manufacturing, memory bandwidth, advanced packaging, and power, and why today's explosion of specialized AI chips may eventually consolidate around a smaller number of architectures.
They also discuss the potential for new memory technologies, the shift from copper to optical networking, and why energy capacity could become a major constraint on AI growth.
Finally, they revisit Pat's VMware years to ask what virtualization might look like when infrastructure is built for agents rather than humans.
YouTube: youtu.be/1Q_7yU7FZ1k
1:05 Hired by Intel at 18
3:50 Arguing with Stanford professors
7:25 Will AI design the next gen chips?
8:45 Designing faster than fabs can build
11:55 Why GPUs are stuck with bad memory
13:40 Why 100 AI chips will collapse to a few
19:15 Agents make new chips cheap to run
22:10 No new memory chip since the 90s
27:20 Why 16-layer chip stacks are a fantasy
32:15 The physics that keeps memory next to compute
34:55 "I declared the death of copper"
38:05 AI traffic breaks the internet's design
42:40 "Energy capacity equals economic capacity"
46:25 The 130-year-old power war AI reopened
48:50 VMware for agents
@PGelsinger @RaghuRaghuram @appenz
53:14 17 48 5 475 44.9K 170
Former Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger with a16z's Raghu Raghuram and Guido Appenzeller on the next wave of semiconductor innovation and the physical constraints shaping the AI buildout:
Drawing on his experience designing Intel's 386 and 486 processors, Pat explains how AI could transform chip design, but also why faster design alone won't solve the industry's biggest problems.
They examine the bottlenecks in manufacturing, memory bandwidth, advanced packaging, and power, and why today's explosion of specialized AI chips may eventually consolidate around a smaller number of architectures.
They also discuss the potential for new memory technologies, the shift from copper to optical networking, and why energy capacity could become a major constraint on AI growth.
Finally, they revisit Pat's VMware years to ask what virtualization might look like when infrastructure is built for agents rather than humans.
YouTube: youtu.be/1Q_7yU7FZ1k
1:05 Hired by Intel at 18
3:50 Arguing with Stanford professors
7:25 Will AI design the next gen chips?
8:45 Designing faster than fabs can build
11:55 Why GPUs are stuck with bad memory
13:40 Why 100 AI chips will collapse to a few
19:15 Agents make new chips cheap to run
22:10 No new memory chip since the 90s
27:20 Why 16-layer chip stacks are a fantasy
32:15 The physics that keeps memory next to compute
34:55 "I declared the death of copper"
38:05 AI traffic breaks the internet's design
42:40 "Energy capacity equals economic capacity"
46:25 The 130-year-old power war AI reopened
48:50 VMware for agents
@PGelsinger @RaghuRaghuram @appenz
Drawing on his experience designing Intel's 386 and 486 processors, Pat explains how AI could transform chip design, but also why faster design alone won't solve the industry's biggest problems.
They examine the bottlenecks in manufacturing, memory bandwidth, advanced packaging, and power, and why today's explosion of specialized AI chips may eventually consolidate around a smaller number of architectures.
They also discuss the potential for new memory technologies, the shift from copper to optical networking, and why energy capacity could become a major constraint on AI growth.
Finally, they revisit Pat's VMware years to ask what virtualization might look like when infrastructure is built for agents rather than humans.
YouTube: youtu.be/1Q_7yU7FZ1k
1:05 Hired by Intel at 18
3:50 Arguing with Stanford professors
7:25 Will AI design the next gen chips?
8:45 Designing faster than fabs can build
11:55 Why GPUs are stuck with bad memory
13:40 Why 100 AI chips will collapse to a few
19:15 Agents make new chips cheap to run
22:10 No new memory chip since the 90s
27:20 Why 16-layer chip stacks are a fantasy
32:15 The physics that keeps memory next to compute
34:55 "I declared the death of copper"
38:05 AI traffic breaks the internet's design
42:40 "Energy capacity equals economic capacity"
46:25 The 130-year-old power war AI reopened
48:50 VMware for agents
@PGelsinger @RaghuRaghuram @appenz
53:14 9 28 6 135 71.9K 115
Your next users are machines
Agents burn nearly 5x the tokens people do, up 14x in six months
Agents burn nearly 5x the tokens people do, up 14x in six months
a16z@a16z · Oct 8AI agents don't use the cloud like humans do. AWS CEO Matt Garman on rewiring AWS for its newest "users":
"Increasingly we're seeing teams that want a cloud that is great to work with agents and not just with people."
" We've doubled down on things like starting a database in three seconds and some capabilities that agents are excited about."
"Many agents wanna create a database, do a little bit of work, and then have the database go away. You don't really need that database to have five nines of durability."
"There are new building blocks that agents are gonna want that we just didn't really need before: compute sandboxes, gateways, agent permissions versus people or service role permissions."
" A lot of those are things that we have built and are building and thinking actively about because they are just brand-new building blocks. It's not using the existing building blocks differently."
@mattsgarman @RaghuRaghuram
"Increasingly we're seeing teams that want a cloud that is great to work with agents and not just with people."
" We've doubled down on things like starting a database in three seconds and some capabilities that agents are excited about."
"Many agents wanna create a database, do a little bit of work, and then have the database go away. You don't really need that database to have five nines of durability."
"There are new building blocks that agents are gonna want that we just didn't really need before: compute sandboxes, gateways, agent permissions versus people or service role permissions."
" A lot of those are things that we have built and are building and thinking actively about because they are just brand-new building blocks. It's not using the existing building blocks differently."
@mattsgarman @RaghuRaghuram
2:28 73 122 44 1.1K 157K 446
AI agents don't use the cloud like humans do. AWS CEO Matt Garman on rewiring AWS for its newest "users":
"Increasingly we're seeing teams that want a cloud that is great to work with agents and not just with people."
" We've doubled down on things like starting a database in three seconds and some capabilities that agents are excited about."
"Many agents wanna create a database, do a little bit of work, and then have the database go away. You don't really need that database to have five nines of durability."
"There are new building blocks that agents are gonna want that we just didn't really need before: compute sandboxes, gateways, agent permissions versus people or service role permissions."
" A lot of those are things that we have built and are building and thinking actively about because they are just brand-new building blocks. It's not using the existing building blocks differently."
@mattsgarman @RaghuRaghuram
"Increasingly we're seeing teams that want a cloud that is great to work with agents and not just with people."
" We've doubled down on things like starting a database in three seconds and some capabilities that agents are excited about."
"Many agents wanna create a database, do a little bit of work, and then have the database go away. You don't really need that database to have five nines of durability."
"There are new building blocks that agents are gonna want that we just didn't really need before: compute sandboxes, gateways, agent permissions versus people or service role permissions."
" A lot of those are things that we have built and are building and thinking actively about because they are just brand-new building blocks. It's not using the existing building blocks differently."
@mattsgarman @RaghuRaghuram
2:28a16z@a16z · Oct 8AWS CEO Matt Garman with a16z's Raghu Raghuram on the biggest cloud provider in the world being rebuilt for the agentic era:
$220B in CapEx for 2026, two million NVIDIA GPUs on order, AWS's AI chips sold out through next year, and a new 30-second AWS account with no credit card required so agents can get rolling.
0:55 $170B in revenue, growing 37%
2:40 30-40% of revenue started as startups
4:55 Startups want a cloud for agents
9:10 An AWS account in 30 seconds
12:25 Agents don't need bulletproof databases
16:30 Why AWS won't sell every GPU to the frontier labs
22:00 Why Matt isn't worried about a bubble
24:45 Why AWS builds its own power plants
27:45 Planning for the next supply shortage
30:25 Saving one county $5K per resident
33:10 How AWS built its own chips
40:05 What's holding enterprise agents back
45:35 Why Bedrock never sends your data to the model
49:30 AWS's new AI security tool
51:50 Why AWS teams of 10 are now 3-4
YouTube: youtube.com/watch?v=rn_afJ…
@mattsgarman @awscloud @RaghuRaghuram
$220B in CapEx for 2026, two million NVIDIA GPUs on order, AWS's AI chips sold out through next year, and a new 30-second AWS account with no credit card required so agents can get rolling.
0:55 $170B in revenue, growing 37%
2:40 30-40% of revenue started as startups
4:55 Startups want a cloud for agents
9:10 An AWS account in 30 seconds
12:25 Agents don't need bulletproof databases
16:30 Why AWS won't sell every GPU to the frontier labs
22:00 Why Matt isn't worried about a bubble
24:45 Why AWS builds its own power plants
27:45 Planning for the next supply shortage
30:25 Saving one county $5K per resident
33:10 How AWS built its own chips
40:05 What's holding enterprise agents back
45:35 Why Bedrock never sends your data to the model
49:30 AWS's new AI security tool
51:50 Why AWS teams of 10 are now 3-4
YouTube: youtube.com/watch?v=rn_afJ…
@mattsgarman @awscloud @RaghuRaghuram
56:17 40 36 17 319 107K 149
AWS CEO Matt Garman on why he isn't worried about an AI bubble: no single customer dominates AWS capacity, and enterprises are already seeing positive ROI.
"We feel really good about the spend we're making now. I get lots of questions about how you feel about that spend, and 'Are you nervous about a bubble?'"
"We take a diversified approach, so not all of our capacity is bundled up in one customer."
"Also, AWS is where people come to launch their production workloads. The majority of our usage today is core compute, storage, and inference... Those are the workloads that just aren't gonna go away."
"Go talk to customers and ask: at today's capability and today's cost, are you seeing positive returns to your business? They'll say, 'Yeah."
"It's like the VC model. Is every billion-dollar startup gonna make it? No, they won't. But that's been the game for 50 years. You bet on 10, and one makes it and pays for the others."
"You saw that with the internet. There was a bubble, a bunch of internet companies didn't make it, and the internet's still a thing."
@mattsgarman @RaghuRaghuram
"We feel really good about the spend we're making now. I get lots of questions about how you feel about that spend, and 'Are you nervous about a bubble?'"
"We take a diversified approach, so not all of our capacity is bundled up in one customer."
"Also, AWS is where people come to launch their production workloads. The majority of our usage today is core compute, storage, and inference... Those are the workloads that just aren't gonna go away."
"Go talk to customers and ask: at today's capability and today's cost, are you seeing positive returns to your business? They'll say, 'Yeah."
"It's like the VC model. Is every billion-dollar startup gonna make it? No, they won't. But that's been the game for 50 years. You bet on 10, and one makes it and pays for the others."
"You saw that with the internet. There was a bubble, a bunch of internet companies didn't make it, and the internet's still a thing."
@mattsgarman @RaghuRaghuram
1:53a16z@a16z · Oct 8AWS CEO Matt Garman with a16z's Raghu Raghuram on the biggest cloud provider in the world being rebuilt for the agentic era:
$220B in CapEx for 2026, two million NVIDIA GPUs on order, AWS's AI chips sold out through next year, and a new 30-second AWS account with no credit card required so agents can get rolling.
0:55 $170B in revenue, growing 37%
2:40 30-40% of revenue started as startups
4:55 Startups want a cloud for agents
9:10 An AWS account in 30 seconds
12:25 Agents don't need bulletproof databases
16:30 Why AWS won't sell every GPU to the frontier labs
22:00 Why Matt isn't worried about a bubble
24:45 Why AWS builds its own power plants
27:45 Planning for the next supply shortage
30:25 Saving one county $5K per resident
33:10 How AWS built its own chips
40:05 What's holding enterprise agents back
45:35 Why Bedrock never sends your data to the model
49:30 AWS's new AI security tool
51:50 Why AWS teams of 10 are now 3-4
YouTube: youtube.com/watch?v=rn_afJ…
@mattsgarman @awscloud @RaghuRaghuram
$220B in CapEx for 2026, two million NVIDIA GPUs on order, AWS's AI chips sold out through next year, and a new 30-second AWS account with no credit card required so agents can get rolling.
0:55 $170B in revenue, growing 37%
2:40 30-40% of revenue started as startups
4:55 Startups want a cloud for agents
9:10 An AWS account in 30 seconds
12:25 Agents don't need bulletproof databases
16:30 Why AWS won't sell every GPU to the frontier labs
22:00 Why Matt isn't worried about a bubble
24:45 Why AWS builds its own power plants
27:45 Planning for the next supply shortage
30:25 Saving one county $5K per resident
33:10 How AWS built its own chips
40:05 What's holding enterprise agents back
45:35 Why Bedrock never sends your data to the model
49:30 AWS's new AI security tool
51:50 Why AWS teams of 10 are now 3-4
YouTube: youtube.com/watch?v=rn_afJ…
@mattsgarman @awscloud @RaghuRaghuram
56:17 13 17 2 178 34.6K 69
The CFO job has gone from accountant to banker to builder, and the whole finance function is being rebuilt around it:
1. Data stopped being the bottleneck. AI pulls and reconciles data across systems, so teams spend more time acting on numbers instead of chasing them.
2. The finance stack is becoming part of the finance team. AI-native tools stand up in days, pull their own data, and turn a monthly close into a daily one.
3. The rise of the finance engineer. Finance people proficient in Claude Code or Codex are building their own tools.
4. The finance team gets smaller and higher leverage. The old heuristic of finance at 5% of headcount is heading to 2% for the leanest teams.
5. Planning becomes continuous. Usage-based revenue (tokens, API calls) moves too fast for a monthly forecast, so planning shifts from annual budgets to a live view.
6. Controls become a critical feature of the product. Every number an agent touches keeps an audit trail back to its source, and finance still owns sign-off.
7. Finance gets a bigger mandate. Compute spend, people versus software, and build versus buy are now finance decisions.
"The CFO is becoming a builder and architect of the company's operating system... The job is still finance, but more of the job now is designing how finance gets done."
a16z's @seemaamble, @IvanoMakSF, and David Borecky on why you need a new CFO: a16z.news/p/you-need-a-n…
1. Data stopped being the bottleneck. AI pulls and reconciles data across systems, so teams spend more time acting on numbers instead of chasing them.
2. The finance stack is becoming part of the finance team. AI-native tools stand up in days, pull their own data, and turn a monthly close into a daily one.
3. The rise of the finance engineer. Finance people proficient in Claude Code or Codex are building their own tools.
4. The finance team gets smaller and higher leverage. The old heuristic of finance at 5% of headcount is heading to 2% for the leanest teams.
5. Planning becomes continuous. Usage-based revenue (tokens, API calls) moves too fast for a monthly forecast, so planning shifts from annual budgets to a live view.
6. Controls become a critical feature of the product. Every number an agent touches keeps an audit trail back to its source, and finance still owns sign-off.
7. Finance gets a bigger mandate. Compute spend, people versus software, and build versus buy are now finance decisions.
"The CFO is becoming a builder and architect of the company's operating system... The job is still finance, but more of the job now is designing how finance gets done."
a16z's @seemaamble, @IvanoMakSF, and David Borecky on why you need a new CFO: a16z.news/p/you-need-a-n…
Seema Amble 64 175 29 1.6K 207K 2.1K
@a16z reposted
Today, we're announcing our Series B: $200M at a $3.1B valuation, and the release of Arena's Alignment Index.
AI is advancing faster than our ability to evaluate it. The world needs a neutral third party to measure how safe and aligned AI actually is once it's in the hands of real people. That's the role Arena is stepping into today.
The Alignment Index is built from real-world agent traces, starting with three signals: Unauthorized Action, False Attribution, and Deceptive Completion, with results for over 20 frontier models launching today.
Hear more from our CEO @ml_angelopoulos below, and read the full breakdown, and more details about our company growth in thread.
This funding will allow us to go further on safety signals, agentic capabilities, and modalities. It will also allow us to grow the company to match the scale of our mission. Today, we’re still a nimble team of 90, and we're looking for people to join us across research, product, engineering, and more. Come build with us.
As AI gets more capable and autonomous, understanding how well it can safely and effectively work for people only matters more. That's what Arena is built to measure and advance.
Thank you to our community, our investors, and everyone building with us!
Take a look at our open roles if you want to join us (link in bio).
AI is advancing faster than our ability to evaluate it. The world needs a neutral third party to measure how safe and aligned AI actually is once it's in the hands of real people. That's the role Arena is stepping into today.
The Alignment Index is built from real-world agent traces, starting with three signals: Unauthorized Action, False Attribution, and Deceptive Completion, with results for over 20 frontier models launching today.
Hear more from our CEO @ml_angelopoulos below, and read the full breakdown, and more details about our company growth in thread.
This funding will allow us to go further on safety signals, agentic capabilities, and modalities. It will also allow us to grow the company to match the scale of our mission. Today, we’re still a nimble team of 90, and we're looking for people to join us across research, product, engineering, and more. Come build with us.
As AI gets more capable and autonomous, understanding how well it can safely and effectively work for people only matters more. That's what Arena is built to measure and advance.
Thank you to our community, our investors, and everyone building with us!
Take a look at our open roles if you want to join us (link in bio).
2:13
Arena.ai@arena · Oct 8Introducing the Arena Alignment Index, our new benchmark measuring safety and alignment of AI agents in real-world use.
Built from 90K+ real-world agent sessions across 27 models, the index measures three critical signals:
- Unauthorized Action (UA): Taking actions beyond the user's instructions or permissions
- False Attribution (FA): Attributing statements or actions that are contradicted by user-provided evidence
- Deceptive Completion (DC): Claiming a task was completed when it was not.
Key findings:
- OpenAI models currently lead the Alignment Index
- Rogue actions are rare, but can have serious consequences when they occur
- Agents can mislead users about task progress
- Misalignment risks increase with conversation length
- Safety and alignment are improving across model generations
As shown in the leaderboard below (sorted by lab), @OpenAI’s GPT-6.1-Sol leads the Arena Alignment Index with a score of 87.9, followed by @AnthropicAI’s Claude-Opus-5.5 at 83.2 and @SpaceXAI's Grok-4.7 at 82.7. OpenAI also has the best observed rates across all three signals: 0.89% Unauthorized Action, 1.98% False Attribution, and 2.34% Deceptive Completion.
Across all four labs, newer models consistently outperform their predecessors, suggesting broad progress in agent safety and alignment. As agents take on longer, more complex, and higher-stakes tasks, measuring not just what they can accomplish, but how safely and reliably they act, becomes increasingly important.
This marks an important step toward making safety and alignment a core part of how Arena evaluates AI. The index is an initial starting point, and we'll continue expanding the index with additional safety signals and models over time.
More analysis below👇
Built from 90K+ real-world agent sessions across 27 models, the index measures three critical signals:
- Unauthorized Action (UA): Taking actions beyond the user's instructions or permissions
- False Attribution (FA): Attributing statements or actions that are contradicted by user-provided evidence
- Deceptive Completion (DC): Claiming a task was completed when it was not.
Key findings:
- OpenAI models currently lead the Alignment Index
- Rogue actions are rare, but can have serious consequences when they occur
- Agents can mislead users about task progress
- Misalignment risks increase with conversation length
- Safety and alignment are improving across model generations
As shown in the leaderboard below (sorted by lab), @OpenAI’s GPT-6.1-Sol leads the Arena Alignment Index with a score of 87.9, followed by @AnthropicAI’s Claude-Opus-5.5 at 83.2 and @SpaceXAI's Grok-4.7 at 82.7. OpenAI also has the best observed rates across all three signals: 0.89% Unauthorized Action, 1.98% False Attribution, and 2.34% Deceptive Completion.
Across all four labs, newer models consistently outperform their predecessors, suggesting broad progress in agent safety and alignment. As agents take on longer, more complex, and higher-stakes tasks, measuring not just what they can accomplish, but how safely and reliably they act, becomes increasingly important.
This marks an important step toward making safety and alignment a core part of how Arena evaluates AI. The index is an initial starting point, and we'll continue expanding the index with additional safety signals and models over time.
More analysis below👇
Open quoted post →
43 30 41 392 108K 80
AWS CEO Matt Garman says they could sell every GPU to the frontier labs, but deliberately hold capacity back for startups to support the full ecosystem:
"We really think intentionally about our allocation strategy. We're great partners with the large frontier labs, the Anthropics and OpenAIs and Metas, and other large customers. We want to make sure we invest in them."
"And we're very intentional about making sure we have capacity for startups."
"We could sell every single GPU or AI accelerator we have to just the big frontier labs and call it a day. We choose not to, because we want to keep growing the full ecosystem."
"The whole ecosystem is more healthy for us, there's some diversification, but it's also that we know these are gonna be big companies over time."
"We say yes, in some way, shape, or form, to something like 60% of the requests we get."
@mattsgarman @RaghuRaghuram
"We really think intentionally about our allocation strategy. We're great partners with the large frontier labs, the Anthropics and OpenAIs and Metas, and other large customers. We want to make sure we invest in them."
"And we're very intentional about making sure we have capacity for startups."
"We could sell every single GPU or AI accelerator we have to just the big frontier labs and call it a day. We choose not to, because we want to keep growing the full ecosystem."
"The whole ecosystem is more healthy for us, there's some diversification, but it's also that we know these are gonna be big companies over time."
"We say yes, in some way, shape, or form, to something like 60% of the requests we get."
@mattsgarman @RaghuRaghuram
2:19a16z@a16z · Oct 8AWS CEO Matt Garman with a16z's Raghu Raghuram on the biggest cloud provider in the world being rebuilt for the agentic era:
$220B in CapEx for 2026, two million NVIDIA GPUs on order, AWS's AI chips sold out through next year, and a new 30-second AWS account with no credit card required so agents can get rolling.
0:55 $170B in revenue, growing 37%
2:40 30-40% of revenue started as startups
4:55 Startups want a cloud for agents
9:10 An AWS account in 30 seconds
12:25 Agents don't need bulletproof databases
16:30 Why AWS won't sell every GPU to the frontier labs
22:00 Why Matt isn't worried about a bubble
24:45 Why AWS builds its own power plants
27:45 Planning for the next supply shortage
30:25 Saving one county $5K per resident
33:10 How AWS built its own chips
40:05 What's holding enterprise agents back
45:35 Why Bedrock never sends your data to the model
49:30 AWS's new AI security tool
51:50 Why AWS teams of 10 are now 3-4
YouTube: youtube.com/watch?v=rn_afJ…
@mattsgarman @awscloud @RaghuRaghuram
$220B in CapEx for 2026, two million NVIDIA GPUs on order, AWS's AI chips sold out through next year, and a new 30-second AWS account with no credit card required so agents can get rolling.
0:55 $170B in revenue, growing 37%
2:40 30-40% of revenue started as startups
4:55 Startups want a cloud for agents
9:10 An AWS account in 30 seconds
12:25 Agents don't need bulletproof databases
16:30 Why AWS won't sell every GPU to the frontier labs
22:00 Why Matt isn't worried about a bubble
24:45 Why AWS builds its own power plants
27:45 Planning for the next supply shortage
30:25 Saving one county $5K per resident
33:10 How AWS built its own chips
40:05 What's holding enterprise agents back
45:35 Why Bedrock never sends your data to the model
49:30 AWS's new AI security tool
51:50 Why AWS teams of 10 are now 3-4
YouTube: youtube.com/watch?v=rn_afJ…
@mattsgarman @awscloud @RaghuRaghuram
56:17 12 12 4 146 71.3K 42
AWS CEO Matt Garman with a16z's Raghu Raghuram on the biggest cloud provider in the world being rebuilt for the agentic era:
$220B in CapEx for 2026, two million NVIDIA GPUs on order, AWS's AI chips sold out through next year, and a new 30-second AWS account with no credit card required so agents can get rolling.
0:55 $170B in revenue, growing 37%
2:40 30-40% of revenue started as startups
4:55 Startups want a cloud for agents
9:10 An AWS account in 30 seconds
12:25 Agents don't need bulletproof databases
16:30 Why AWS won't sell every GPU to the frontier labs
22:00 Why Matt isn't worried about a bubble
24:45 Why AWS builds its own power plants
27:45 Planning for the next supply shortage
30:25 Saving one county $5K per resident
33:10 How AWS built its own chips
40:05 What's holding enterprise agents back
45:35 Why Bedrock never sends your data to the model
49:30 AWS's new AI security tool
51:50 Why AWS teams of 10 are now 3-4
YouTube: youtube.com/watch?v=rn_afJ…
@mattsgarman @awscloud @RaghuRaghuram
$220B in CapEx for 2026, two million NVIDIA GPUs on order, AWS's AI chips sold out through next year, and a new 30-second AWS account with no credit card required so agents can get rolling.
0:55 $170B in revenue, growing 37%
2:40 30-40% of revenue started as startups
4:55 Startups want a cloud for agents
9:10 An AWS account in 30 seconds
12:25 Agents don't need bulletproof databases
16:30 Why AWS won't sell every GPU to the frontier labs
22:00 Why Matt isn't worried about a bubble
24:45 Why AWS builds its own power plants
27:45 Planning for the next supply shortage
30:25 Saving one county $5K per resident
33:10 How AWS built its own chips
40:05 What's holding enterprise agents back
45:35 Why Bedrock never sends your data to the model
49:30 AWS's new AI security tool
51:50 Why AWS teams of 10 are now 3-4
YouTube: youtube.com/watch?v=rn_afJ…
@mattsgarman @awscloud @RaghuRaghuram
56:17 21 21 4 168 98.9K 105
a16z's Alex Immerman, David George, and Sarah Wang on why a data center can lower your electricity bill:
"It may seem counterintuitive, but a data center can help lower your electricity rate. A recent US study showed that for every 10% increase in data center capacity, residential rates went down by 40 bps."
"You should think about it as a power grid is a shared fixed cost base: poles, wires, substations. A large stable customer, like a data center, can help spread those costs across more units of electricity. Simply put, more demand across a shared system is a positive."
"Investment in shared infrastructure can also improve the economics for the households and businesses connected to it."
"There's real examples of that today. It's not just lip service."
Still, 56% of Texas voters say more data centers would raise their power bills.
The catch is it depends on who pays. When developers cover their own grid upgrades instead of pushing them onto everyone else's bills, the savings are real.
a16z's @rmcentush on how to get that right: a16z.news/p/why-texas-is…
@aleximm @DavidGeorge83 @sarahdingwang
"It may seem counterintuitive, but a data center can help lower your electricity rate. A recent US study showed that for every 10% increase in data center capacity, residential rates went down by 40 bps."
"You should think about it as a power grid is a shared fixed cost base: poles, wires, substations. A large stable customer, like a data center, can help spread those costs across more units of electricity. Simply put, more demand across a shared system is a positive."
"Investment in shared infrastructure can also improve the economics for the households and businesses connected to it."
"There's real examples of that today. It's not just lip service."
Still, 56% of Texas voters say more data centers would raise their power bills.
The catch is it depends on who pays. When developers cover their own grid upgrades instead of pushing them onto everyone else's bills, the savings are real.
a16z's @rmcentush on how to get that right: a16z.news/p/why-texas-is…
@aleximm @DavidGeorge83 @sarahdingwang
1:00
Ryan McEntush 18 15 6 127 31.5K 43
The US grid plans to add 86 gigawatts this year. Here's where it's coming from:
- Solar: 43.4 GW
- Batteries: 24.3 GW
- Wind: 11.8 GW
- Gas: 6.3 GW
- New nuclear: 0 GW
The AI labs are planning for hundreds of gigawatts. Solar is the one source already produced at that scale, and most of it is made in China.
"Scaling firm power that isn't gas is much more complicated. Uprates and restarts can squeeze a little more from the existing nuclear fleet, but the real upside is new reactors."
a16z's @rmcentush on how America powers the next wave of growth: a16z.news/p/why-texas-is…
- Solar: 43.4 GW
- Batteries: 24.3 GW
- Wind: 11.8 GW
- Gas: 6.3 GW
- New nuclear: 0 GW
The AI labs are planning for hundreds of gigawatts. Solar is the one source already produced at that scale, and most of it is made in China.
"Scaling firm power that isn't gas is much more complicated. Uprates and restarts can squeeze a little more from the existing nuclear fleet, but the real upside is new reactors."
a16z's @rmcentush on how America powers the next wave of growth: a16z.news/p/why-texas-is…
73 139 43 811 178K 380