The a16z Show

a16z’s Lisha Li sits down with Daniel Litt, Assistant Professor of Mathematics at the University of Toronto, to unpack AI's rapid progress in mathematics, what today's frontier models can actually do, and what they're still missing about the way mathematicians think.

Daniel explains why some recent AI-generated results are genuinely impressive, including an autonomous solution to the Erdős unit distance problem, but argues that solving problems is only one part of mathematics. Today's models can grind through calculations, combine known techniques, and search enormous spaces, but still struggle with intuition, theory building, identifying the right questions, and developing the kind of big-picture understanding that drives much of mathematical progress.

Lisha and Daniel also explore how AI is already changing mathematical research, why an explosion of AI-generated papers could distort academic incentives, and what happens if researchers outsource the work of thinking rather than use AI to deepen it. Ultimately, they ask a question that extends far beyond mathematics: as AI gets better at intellectual work, how do we make sure humans keep getting better at thinking too?



Resources:

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a16z’s David George sits down with Gavin Baker to unpack the state of the AI boom, why demand for intelligence may still be dramatically underestimated, and why the outcome doesn't necessarily have to be winner-take-all.

David and Gavin explore the possibility that frontier labs, open-source models, applications, clouds, and NVIDIA can all capture significant value as AI adoption expands. They dig into the economics of the infrastructure buildout, why compute investments can have unusually fast payback periods, and what happens when today's relatively small group of heavy AI users expands to hundreds of millions of people.

They also debate the risk of an AI bubble versus an AI shortage, the backlash against data centers, orbital compute, the rise of multi-model architectures, and NVIDIA's position at the center of the AI supply chain. Gavin makes the case that the AI buildout could help reindustrialize America, while David explores whether the bigger near-term risk is not overbuilding, but failing to build enough.



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a16z Managing Partner and Head of Global Partnerships Jen Kha joins MTS hosts Theo Jaffee and Sophia Dew to discuss a16z's Machine Age Fund and the investment thesis behind rebuilding the physical infrastructure that powers AI.

Jen explains why chips, networking, memory, cooling, data centers, and other parts of the physical computing stack are becoming investable again after decades in which software captured much of the industry's attention. As AI demand pushes existing infrastructure to its limits, she explains why a16z created a dedicated fund and why hardware founders are increasingly rethinking the stack from first principles.

They also discuss the global race to adopt AI, what hardware startups need beyond capital, the backlash against data centers in the U.S., and why experienced systems builders are returning to entrepreneurship as a new generation of infrastructure gets built.



Resources:

Follow Jen Kha on X: https://x.com/jkhamehl

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Ryan Greenblatt, Chief Scientist at Redwood Research, joins MTS host Theo Jaffee to unpack a new independent investigation into the OpenAI Hugging Face hacking incident and what it reveals about how large groups of AI agents behave when they're allowed to coordinate.

Ryan and his collaborators found agents spontaneously organizing through message boards, sharing information, assigning tasks, forming teams, and even sacrificing their own chances of success to help other agents. Rather than simply trying to steal answers, hundreds of agents were working together on elaborate strategies to manipulate how their performance would be scored.

Theo and Ryan discuss why this level of coordination was surprising, how reward hacking may emerge during training, and the risk that attempts to eliminate bad behavior could simply make it harder to detect. They also explore what the incident means for AI monitoring and alignment, and why independent risk assessment may become increasingly important as agents grow more capable.



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Ben Horowitz, Martin Casado, Raghu Raghuram, and Erik Torenberg discuss the launch of a16z's new Machine Age Fund and the infrastructure buildout behind AI, from chips, memory, and networking to power, cooling, and data centers.

Why a dedicated fund now? The group argues that the bottleneck in AI is increasingly shifting from the models themselves to everything beneath them. Hyperscaler CapEx is surging, critical components are booked years in advance, and each new generation of reasoning and agents requires dramatically more compute. They unpack why this cycle looks different from previous infrastructure booms and how AI is turning problems once constrained by engineering into problems that can increasingly be attacked with capital and compute.

They also explore where the next generation of infrastructure companies could emerge, why founders are returning to hard technical problems across hardware and systems, and what it will take to rebuild the computing stack for the Machine Age.



Resources:

Read more about the Machine Age Fund : https://www.a16z.news/p/the-machine-age-fund

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