The a16z Show · Saturday, September 5, 2026
Aaron Levie argued that a strategy of the US having expensive AI while the rest of the world has cheap AI would be detrimental to American competitiveness. He suggested that making products like the iPhone prohibitively expensive to avoid relying on foreign manufacturing advancements would not be a viable long-term approach.
“Like I don't know, if you kind of play out the alternative, then all you would basically be arguing is America should have really expensive AI and the rest of the world should have very cheap AI.”
“And then we'll see how kind of that works competitively over the next four or ten years.”