Best software Eats The World Podcasts (2025)

1
Emmett Shear on Building AI That Actually Cares: Beyond Control and Steering 1:10:36

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19m ago1:10:36

1:10:36

Emmett Shear, founder of Twitch and former OpenAI interim CEO, challenges the fundamental assumptions driving AGI development. In this conversation with Erik Torenberg and Séb Krier, Shear argues that the entire "control and steering" paradigm for AI alignment is fatally flawed. Instead, he proposes "organic alignment" - teaching AI systems to genu…

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The AI presentation 38:00

44m ago38:00

38:00

It's time for Benedict's annual Tech Trends presentation. What's new, what's boring, what are the new questions?By Benedict Evans, Toni Cowan-Brown

1
Lighthouse Phishing Kit Takedown, Zero Day Mysteries, and Measuring Cyber Attack Costs 46:11

2h ago46:11

46:11

This week was a bit of a throwback to olden times, with the disclosure by Amazon threat intelligence of zero days in Cisco and Citrix products that were exploited by an unnamed APT, and Google using legal action to disrupt the Lighthouse phishing service operation. We dig into those two stories, plus we discuss the challenge of trying to quantify t…

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Can America Win The AI Biotech Race Against China? | Lada Nuzhna & Elliot Hershberg 1:02:23

3d ago1:02:23

1:02:23

Two venture capitalists dissect why biotech burns billions while China runs trials in weeks—and why the next Genentech won't look anything like the last one. Elliot Hershberg reveals the "three horsemen" strangling drug development as costs explode to $2.5 billion per approval, while Lada Nuzhna exposes how investigator-initiated trials in Shanghai…

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The Frontier of Spatial Intelligence with Fei-Fei Li 44:11

4d ago44:11

44:11

Fei-Fei Li and Justin Johnson are pioneers in AI. While the world has only recently witnessed a surge in consumer AI, they have long been laying the groundwork for the innovations transforming industries today. With the recent launch of Marble, the first product from their company World Labs, we are revisiting this conversation to explore the ideas…

1
Delay... Not Debt 8:23

3h ago8:23

8:23

Jesse shares a story about helping his daughter use YNAB to plan her spending and save for an electric bicycle. The bike was $600, quite a big ticket item for a 9 year old, but together they came up with a plan and created a target in YNAB to assign money toward that goal each month. And when the day came a few months later to make the purchase... …

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The Hacker Movie Canon: The Social Network 1:13:02

4h ago1:13:02

1:13:02

"You know, you really don't need a forensics team to get to the bottom of this. If you guys were the inventors of Facebook, you'd have invented Facebook." Melanie Ensign joins Dennis Fisher and Lindsey O'Donnell-Welch to discuss David Fincher's massively successful 2010 film, The Social Network, a movie that opens a window into the dark side of Sil…

1
Rocket Companies CEO: Here’s How to Fix the Housing Crisis 55:55

5d ago55:55

55:55

The Empire State Building took 110 days to build—today, changing a window would take two years. Alex Rampell (a16z) and Varun Krishna (Rocket CEO) expose how asset inflation turned housing from the American Dream into a wealth transfer machine where the median homebuyer age jumped from 30 to 38 in just fourteen years. While Silicon Valley burns bil…

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Grant Lee: Building Gamma’s AI Presentation Company to 100 Million Users 53:17

6d ago53:17

53:17

Grant Lee was told Gamma was "the worst idea ever heard" by an investor who hung up mid-Zoom—yet he built it to 100 million users and $100M ARR without spending a dollar on advertising. While competitors hired aggressively, Grant's team of seven refused to grow, dedicating 25% of their tiny team to design and personally onboarding every influencer …

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Michael Truell: How Cursor Builds at the Speed of AI 27:30

7d ago27:30

27:30

When four MIT grads decided to build a code editor while everyone else was building AI agents, they created the fastest-growing developer tool ever built. Cursor CEO Michael Truell joins a16z’s Martin Casado to discuss the deliberate constraints that led to breakthroughs: why they rejected the "democratization" narrative to focus on power users, ho…

1
a16z's State of Crypto: The $4 Trillion Milestone and What's Next' 1:38:31

8d ago1:38:31

1:38:31

The regulatory environment has completely inverted. Stablecoins are now a top 20 holder of US treasuries. Every major bank wants in. In a16z Crypto's 2025 State of Crypto report, Daren Matsuoka (Head of Data) and Eddy Lazzarin (CTO) reveal how crypto hit $4 trillion market cap while fundamentally reshaping how institutions think about payments, wit…

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Amjad Masad & Adam D’Angelo: How Far Are We From AGI? 1:02:44

10d ago1:02:44

1:02:44

Adam D’Angelo (Quora/Poe) thinks we're 5 years from automating remote work. Amjad Masad (Replit) thinks we're brute-forcing intelligence without understanding it. In this conversation, two technical founders who are building the AI future disagree on almost everything: whether LLMs are hitting limits, if we're anywhere close to AGI, and what happen…

1
Mark Zuckerberg & Priscilla Chan: How AI Will Cure All Disease 45:21

11d ago45:21

45:21

Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg join a16z’s Ben Horowitz, Erik Torenberg, and Vineeta Agarwala to share how the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative is building the computational tools that will accelerate the cure, prevention, and management of all disease by century's end. They explain why basic science needs $100 million-scale projects that traditional…

1
Seeing The Future from AI Companions to Personal Software 50:20

12d ago50:20

50:20

Eugenia Kuyda, CEO of Wabi and AI pioneer behind Replika, joins Erik, Anish, and Justine to reveal how personal software will transform from a developer monopoly to a creative medium for all. She exposes why command-line AI interfaces are the new MS-DOS, explains how mini-apps will become as shareable as TikToks, and details her decade-long journey…

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ElevenLabs CEO: Why Voice is the Next AI Interface 31:14

12d ago31:14

31:14

ElevenLabs CEO and co‑founder Mati Staniszewski joins Jennifer Li to explain how the team ships research‑grade AI at lightning speed—from text‑to‑speech and fully licensed AI music to real‑time voice agents—and why voice is the next interface for human‑computer interaction. He shares the small, autonomous team model, global hiring approach, and how…

51
Yahoo's Sean Zadig on How to Raise a Hacker Safely and How Maybe AI Isn't Changing Everything 51:29

8d ago51:29

51:29

Yahoo CISO and Chief Paranoid Sean Zadig returns to the podcast for a discussion with Dennis Fisher about how to go about getting kids interested in technology and teaching them about hacking (in the broad, classical sense) safely (9:10). Then they talk about how rapidly the cybersecurity industry is changing and what effects AI is and is not havin…

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David Sacks: AI, Crypto, China, Dems, and SF 1:16:57

14d ago1:16:57

1:16:57

David Sacks, White House AI and Crypto Czar, joins Marc, Ben, and Erik to explore what's really happening inside the Trump administration's AI and crypto strategy. They expose the regulatory capture playbook being pushed by certain AI companies, explain why open source is America's secret weapon, and detail the infrastructure crisis that could dete…

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Why Speed, Not Size, Will Define the Next War 39:25

16d ago39:25

39:25

As global tensions rise, AI and autonomy are transforming how nations prepare for conflict. In this episode, Horacio Rozanski, CEO of Booz Allen Hamilton and Gary Shield, CEO of Shield AI join Erik Torenberg to discuss how technology, speed, and public–private partnerships are reshaping America’s defense strategy. They cover lessons from Ukraine an…

1
Beyond Chatbots: Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz on AI's Future 38:11

17d ago38:11

38:11

In this closing keynote from a16z’s Runtime conference, General Partner Erik Torenberg speaks with our firm’s cofounders, Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz on highlights from throughout the conference, the current state of LLM capabilities, and why despite huge capex, AI is not a bubble. Resources: Follow Marc on X: https://x.com/pmarca Follow Ben o…

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Shadow AI Is Eating the World, the Return of Hacking Team, and the Commercial Spyware Landscape 41:28

7d ago41:28

41:28

We don't do holiday themed episodes in this house, so no tricks, but we have some treats for you. First we discuss the problem of shadow AI (1:00) and how it seems like we're just repeating the mistakes of previous tech waves in ignoring security until it's too late. Then we dig into a new report from Kaspersky about a crazy exploit they discovered…

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"Is there an AI bubble?” Gavin Baker and David George 31:50

18d ago31:50

31:50

In this conversation from a16z’s Runtime conference, Gavin Baker, Managing Partner and CIO of Atreides Management, joins David George, General Partner at a16z, to unpack the macro view of AI: the trillion-dollar data center buildout, the new economics of GPUs, and what this boom means for investors, founders, and the global economy. Resources: Foll…

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Building the Real-World Infrastructure for AI, with Google, Cisco & a16z 32:44

19d ago32:44

32:44

AI isn’t just changing software, it’s causing the biggest buildout of physical infrastructure in modern history. In this episode, Raghu Raghuram (a16z) speaks with Amin Vahdat, VP and GM of AI and Infrastructure at Google, and Jeetu Patel, President and Chief Product Officer at Cisco, about the unprecedented scale of what’s being built — from chips…

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Google DeepMind Developers: How Nano Banana Was Made 54:19

20d ago54:19

54:19

Google DeepMind’s new image model Nano Banana took the internet by storm. In this episode, we sit down with Principal Scientist Oliver Wang and Group Product Manager Nicole Brichtova to discuss how Nano Banana was created, why it’s so viral, and the future of image and video editing. Resources: Follow Oliver on X: https://x.com/oliver_wang2 Follow …

1
Raghu Raghuram: AI, Robotics, and the Rebirth of Infrastructure 30:12

21d ago30:12

30:12

From Netscape to VMware, Raghu Raghuram has been at the center of nearly every major inflection point in enterprise technology. In this episode, Raghu joins Ben Horowitz, Martin Casado and David George to reflect on the early internet wars with Microsoft, how Netscape’s browser battles shaped a generation of founders, and the inside story of one of…

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Marc Andreessen: How Movies Explain America 1:15:30

24d ago1:15:30

1:15:30

In this episode of Monitoring the Situation, Marc Andreessen, Katherine Boyle, and Erik Torenberg dive into the movies that best explain America, from Once Upon a Time in Hollywood to Tropic Thunder to Fight Club. They explore how Tarantino’s revisionist masterpiece reimagines 1969 and the end of America’s cultural innocence, why Tropic Thunder was…

1
US Cybersecurity Going in Reverse, the AWS Outage, and is CISA Okay 43:35

18d ago43:35

43:35

This week saw a blessed lack of major vulnerabilities, but there was plenty of other news to dig into. We discuss the fallout from the AWS outage (0:36), the conclusions from the latest Cyberspace Solarium Commission report (4:37), and the effects of CISA's shakeup on the private sector (14:07), and the continued effects of the F5 incident (21:21).…

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Marc Andreessen and Amjad Masad: English As the New Programming Language 1:11:38

25d ago1:11:38

1:11:38

Amjad Masad, founder and CEO of Replit, joins a16z’s Marc Andreessen and Erik Torenberg to discuss the new world of AI agents, the future of programming, and how software itself is beginning to build software. They trace the history of computing to the rise of AI agents that can now plan, reason, and code for hours without breaking, and explore how…

1
Jesse Is Taking a Short Break: Stay Tuned! 0:53

14d ago0:53

0:53

Jesse is taking a short break while he's on the road. He'll be back in a couple weeks! Follow Budget Nerds on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuIUGmbCDklkDCDm-cQqv2g Watch The Jesse Mecham Show on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@jessemechamshow Got a question for Jesse? Send him an email: [email protected] Sign up for a free 34-day tria…

1
Why Creativity Will Matter More Than Code 1:25:15

26d ago1:25:15

1:25:15

In this episode, a16z's Anish Acharya joins Kevin Rose for an in-depth, fast-paced conversation on the rebirth of consumer technology, and how AI is reshaping what it means to build, invest, and create. They talk about why AI has reignited the consumer renaissance, what it means to build “weird and working” products, and how the next wave of apps w…

151
The Hacker Movie Canon: Real Genius 53:09

15d ago53:09

53:09

Mitch, there's something you need to know. Compared to you, most people have the IQ of a carrot. Real Genius has it all: '80s movie icon Val Kilmer at his coolest, a brilliant hacker named Laszlo living in a closet, a giant space laser, and the absolute embodiment of the hacker ethos. Join us as we dig into this classic with our pal Wendy Nather. I…

1
How Kong Was Born: APIs, Hustle, and the Future of AI Infrastructure 37:57

27d ago37:57

37:57

Augusto Marietti, CEO and cofounder of Kong, has one of the most remarkable founder stories in Silicon Valley history. In this conversation with Martin Casado, Aghi shares how he went from a garage in Milan to building one of the world’s leading API infrastructure companies, surviving years of rejection, living in the U.S. on $1,000 a month, and ra…

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Reid Hoffman on AI, Consciousness, and the Future of Humanity 53:00

28d ago53:00

53:00

Reid Hoffman has been at the center of every major tech shift, from co-founding LinkedIn and helping build PayPal to investing early in OpenAI. In this conversation, he looks ahead to the next transformation: how artificial intelligence will reshape work, science, and what it means to be human. In this episode, Reid joins Erik Torenberg and Alex Ra…

1
Marc Andreessen on the State of Film and Hollywood 1:07:46

1M ago1:07:46

1:07:46

Hollywood is going through a major cultural and creative reset, and Marc Andreessen thinks it’s long overdue. In this episode of Monitoring the Situation, Marc joins Erik Torenberg and Katherine Boyle to dissect the past decade of filmmaking, from the rise of “the message” in every movie to the return of genuine comedy and art. They cover the post-…

1
Breaking Down the F5 Breach 27:12

23d ago27:12

27:12

In the wake of the disclosure of a serious intrusion at F5 that reportedly lasted about a year, we talk about the details of the disclosure, the potential link to Chinese state actors, the fallout from the attackers' access to source code and bug reports, and what this could mean in the long term.By Decipher

1
Keith Rabois: Israel, OpenAI, Opendoor, and DOGE 49:08

1M ago49:08

49:08

From politics to technology to real estate, Keith Rabois has bold predictions for America’s next decade. In this conversation with Erik Torenberg, Keith breaks down why he believes the U.S. is entering a new economic expansion driven by AI, productivity, and sovereign technology. They discuss how AI could lift GDP growth to 5%, why sovereign AI pro…

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Changing The Rules of Money | Dave Crombleholme Live from Fan Fest Minneapolis 2025 29:34

21d ago29:34

29:34

In today's episode, Jesse hands over the mic to YNAB team member Dave Crombleholme, who presented at the Minneapolis Fan Fest in June 2025. Dave is perhaps most famous for his idea of the Wish Farm at YNAB, but he's also spent a long time wrestling with the word budget. In Dave's presentation, he outlines various iterations of the YNAB rules over t…

1
AI Attack and Defense With Adam Meyers and Elia Zaitsev of CrowdStrike 57:26

23d ago57:26

57:26

Have you heard about this AI thing? It's wild. Turns out, attackers are using it for all kinds of things we'd rather not have them doing. Dennis Fisher is joined by two experts from CrowdStrike--Adam Meyers, head of counter adversary operations, and Elia Zaitsev, CTO--to talk about how both defenders and attackers are leveraging AI and where things…

1
Ben Horowitz and Ali Ghodsi: How to Run a Billion-Dollar Business 1:04:36

1M ago1:04:36

1:04:36

By Erik Torenberg, Ben Horowitz, Ali Ghodsi

1
Is AI Slowing Down? Nathan Labenz Says We're Asking the Wrong Question 1:31:02

1M ago1:31:02

1:31:02

Nathan Labenz is one of the clearest voices analyzing where AI is headed, pairing sharp technical analysis with his years of work on The Cognitive Revolution. In this episode, Nathan joins a16z’s Erik Torenberg to ask a pressing question: is AI progress actually slowing down, or are we just getting used to the breakthroughs? They discuss the debate…

1
Columbia CS Professor: Why LLMs Can’t Discover New Science 50:54

1M ago50:54

50:54

From GPT-1 to GPT-5, LLMs have made tremendous progress in modeling human language. But can they go beyond that to make new discoveries and move the needle on scientific progress? We sat down with distinguished Columbia CS professor Vishal Misra to discuss this, plus why chain-of-thought reasoning works so well, what real AGI would look like, and w…

1
Monitoring the Situation #3: Who Is Nick Land? 52:44

1M ago52:44

52:44

Zach Dell is founder and CEO of Base Power, an energy tech company that builds affordable, reliable power via home batteries. In this episode of Monitoring the Situation, a16z General Partners Erik Torenberg, Katherine Boyle, and Erin Price-Wright sit down with Zach to discuss the current state of home power generation, what’s misunderstood about t…

1
More Cl0p Clues and Huge Apple Bug Bounty Changes 14:17

27d ago14:17

14:17

This week brings some new insights into the origins and length of the Cl0p extortion attacks tied to the Oracle E-Business Suite vulnerability, big surges in scanning for Cisco ASA, Palo Alto, and Fortinet devices, and a huge upgrade to Apple bug bounty payouts. Plus: Does Dennis have a dog yet? https://security.apple.com/blog/apple-security-bounty…

1
Money Is the Medium, Money Is You | Jesse Live from Fan Fest Minneapolis 2025 27:57

1M ago27:57

27:57

In June 2025 at YNAB Fan Fest Minneapolis, Jesse gave a talk about how money is a medium -- not just of exchange, but, ultimately, of you. When you really examine what it is that money does in the world, it is a thing which translates your energy and effort (required to earn the money) into tangible goods and services. When you draw a throughline b…

1
The Hacker Movie Canon: WARGAMES 1:04:30

1M ago1:04:30

1:04:30

What you see on these screens up here is a fantasy; a computer-enhanced hallucination. WarGames may be 42 years old (!) but its prescience about our current technocracy and race to take humans out of the loop is as clear as ever. Dennis Fisher, Lindsey O-Donnell-Welch, Zoe Lindsey, and Pete Baker sit down in front of an IMSAI 8080 with some raw cor…

1
Sam Altman on Sora, Energy, and Building an AI Empire 48:25

1M ago48:25

48:25

Sam Altman has led OpenAI from its founding as a research nonprofit in 2015 to becoming the most valuable startup in the world ten years later. In this episode, a16z Cofounder Ben Horowitz and General Partner Erik Torenberg sit down with Sam to discuss the core thesis behind OpenAI’s disparate bets, why they released Sora, how they use models inter…

1
How to Build a Real Estate Marketplace - Kaz Nejatian, Opendoor CEO 55:44

1M ago55:44

55:44

By Kaz Nejatian, Alex Rampell

1
Can the US Beat China’s Engineering State? 1:03:10

1M ago1:03:10

1:03:10

From high-speed rail to electric cars to batteries to AI, it’s clear that China can operate with incredible speed at massive scale. Can the US still compete? We sat down with Dan Wang, a Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution and the author of “Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future” to discuss. Timecodes: 0:00 Introduction 1:36 Lawyers…

1
Monitoring the Situation #2: Alana Newhouse 58:58

1M ago58:58

58:58

Two trends in media have been abundantly clear since 2020: legacy media is dying, and independent media is rising. a16z General Partners Erik Torenberg and Katherine Boyle sit down with Tablet founder and editor-in-chief Alana Newhouse to discuss the great media realignment, why real institutions will outlast the new “internet pirates", Alana’s dee…

1
The Cl0p-Oracle Extortion Emails, Red Hat Breach, and Sad Government News 35:27

1M ago35:27

35:27

Dennis and Lindsey dissect a busy week in security news, starting with the Cl0p group's extortion campaign against Oracle customers (3:24), then moving into the Crimson Collective's claimed breach of some of Red Hat GitLab's repos (12:41), and finally the consequences of the expiration of th CISA legislation and de-funding of the MS-ISAC (22:46). P…

1
Software is Eating Labor 26:49

1M ago26:49

26:49

Software has fundamentally changed the way we record, store, and share information. Its next act is to fundamentally change the nature of our economy, capturing trillions of dollars of value in the process. In this talk from the 2025 a16z LP Summit, a16z General Partner Alex Rampell discusses the history of filing cabinets and databases, how SaaS p…

Software Eats The World Podcasts