The a16z Show · Friday, October 2, 2026
Vlad Kyle explains how AI agents can intervene in physical supply chain problems by leveraging context to predict and mitigate disruptions. By analyzing supplier reliability, potential delays, and even external news, agents can help protect goods and ensure more reliable deliveries, even when choosing between cheaper but less reliable suppliers versus more expensive, dependable ones.
“So there are ways to protect the goods that you're shipping. And if you have all the context, you have one supplier where 20% of the goods are missing, and then 1% of the good is missing. And maybe this one with 20% is 10x cheaper. But for this use case, it's fine for you to pay 10x the amount, because you have a higher probability that this thing actually arrives.”
“This is the powerful thing because you have like context, not only... within one enterprise. So we talked about multiple stakeholders, but there's also context on the outside world, right? So just the agent should like have contacts of all the news out there. Maybe even having like contacts of like some bad sale, like on Polymarket. I was like, OK, those disruptions are going to happen.”
“Then like information about like on the supplier side, on the seller side, on the demand side. And by combining all of those contacts, I wouldn't say that there is a limitation in the long run.”