The a16z Show · Thursday, September 10, 2026
Speakers believe that while power laws will still apply within specific categories, the AI era will see a massive expansion of new market categories, rather than a single winner dominating. They emphasize that the market is large enough that multiple layers of the tech stack may succeed, and the focus should be on backing leading companies in emerging, credible categories.
“But I think there will be a massive expansion of the amount of categories that we have, right? And so if you go back 20 years, CRM was not a category. I mean, it was small, it was like simple systems. But, you know, now it's a massive category. And so I think the same thing will happen in every technology market that we invest in.”
“And I'm kind of like, I don't know, the market is going to be so big, like I think everything might work.”
“So we try and remove ourselves from thinking in a zero sum way like that.”