a16z General Partner David George joins Jack Altman on Uncapped to make the case that many of the biggest debates in AI are framed the wrong way. Frontier models or open source? Labs or applications? David’s answer is often “and.” With AI adoption still concentrated among a relatively small group of heavy users, he argues there could be room for multiple layers of the stack to grow at once. 

David and Jack discuss why demand for compute continues to outstrip supply, why applications can thrive even as frontier labs expand into new products, and why consumer AI may still be at the beginning of its biggest shift, from reactive chatbots to proactive assistants that can act on our behalf. 

They also zoom out to autonomy, robotics, healthcare, and the next generation of technology companies, before turning to venture itself: why David believes today’s product cycle is unusually strong, how capital can accelerate AI companies in ways it couldn’t during the SaaS era, and why founders and narrative become increasingly important as companies scale. 

This conversation originally appeared on Jack Altman’s Uncapped.

Resources:

Follow David George on X: https://x.com/DavidGeorge83

Follow Jack Altman: https://x.com/jaltma

Listen to more from Uncapped: https://www.youtube.com/@uncappedpod

 

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