The a16z Show · Tuesday, July 14, 2026
Gavin Baker observes that major tech companies are increasingly investing in building their own chips, a pattern seen in previous technology cycles dominated by cloud providers. He questions whether these companies can build a defensible moat around their custom silicon efforts.
“Yeah, and that is the big difference.”
“If you look at the last 10 years of technology cycles, you know, it's been dominated by the cloud providers, AWS, Azure and Google.”
“And so I think you're seeing that same pattern here, but this time with the AI model providers.”
“But can they actually build a defensible moat around that?”