Andreessen Horowitz just raised a whopping $15 billion in new funding. And a chunk of $1.7 billion of that goes to him infrastructure teamthe person responsible for some of its biggest, most significant AI investments, including Black Forest Labs, Cursor, OpenAI, ElevenLabs, Ideogram, Fal, and dozens more.
a16z general partner with the infra team Jennifer Li (who oversees investments like ElevenLabs — just worth $11 billion) has a clear position on where the team wants to spend its last bit of cash.
These investors are no strangers to billion dollar budgets. When the company raised $7.2 billion in 2024the infra group received $1.25 billion at the time, more than any other vertical group.
So what is so exciting about infrastructure, especially in 2026? It covers everything from chip design to any software stack used by developers. This is the heartbeat of AI development and is undergoing a transformation process that has never been seen before, both in how AI is used in these fields (AI coding) and in the AI available to developers (ElevenLabs voice models and Fal’s multimodal model market).
So Li is at the forefront of where AI is today, where it’s going in 2026, and what it is and may never be possible. She is, for example, skeptical about some of the industry’s biggest assumptions, including the idea that artificial intelligence will replace human creativity anytime soon.
Today on TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Venture and Startups editor Julie Bort spoke with Li about where a16z sees this AI supercycle going next, including the talent crisis hitting native startups, why search infrastructure matters more than people think, and what kinds of companies are getting funded right now.
Listen to the full episode to learn about:
- Where Li believes there are still gaps in terms of startups building an AI stack
- What makes the most successful AI portfolio companies different
- How tools like voice AI are growing in importance (but it’s still a little awkward to watch)
- The AI startups it is still looking for and ready to fund
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