Jack Altman

Things Jack Says on Podcasts

Investing at Alt Capital. Founder and chairman of Lattice.

Where to Find Them

Jack Altman hosts Uncapped with Jack Altman , hosts and writes Uncapped with Jack Altman , writes Uncapped with Jack Altman , hosts and writes a16z Podcast , writes The Logan Bartlett Show , writes AI + a16z , writes Lenny's Newsletter and writes Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth . They have also been a guest on The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch (3 times) , The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | Investors (2 times) , In Depth (2 times) , Sourcery , This Week in Startups , Venture Unlocked , People Managing People , StrictlyVC Download and Invest Like the Best (Patrick O'Shaughnessy) . They also write for Jack Altman on Substack.

Recently: “Benchmark Breakfast #1 | Jack and Ev” on Uncapped with Jack Altman (October 2026); “Benchmark's Five Partners on AI, IPOs, and Silicon Valley's Comeback” on StrictlyVC Download (October 2026); “David George & Jack Altman on AI, Autonomy, and the Next $25 Trillion” on a16z Podcast (October 2026); “David George & Jack Altman on AI, Autonomy, and the Next $25 Trillion” on a16z Podcast (October 2026); “Uncapped #58 | David George from a16z” on Uncapped with Jack Altman (October 2026); “20VC: Instinct Raises $1B at $10B Valuation | AMD Buys Fei-Fei Li's World Labs for $8.2B | Meta Poaches MongoDB's CEO | Bessemer Raises $5.75B | Oura Pulls IPO & Nubank Eyes $8–12B Monzo Takeover” on The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch (October 2026).

What They Said

“In this environment, you would need to believe an 18 to 100 story for the next year. … On the surface, that used to be enough where everybody would be super interested if all you heard was it's a software company, like 5 to 18. Whereas now, if that's all you heard, you'd be like, well, why wasn't it 5 to 40? Which is insane.” — Jack Altman, Uncapped with Jack Altman

Ev Randle asked whether a startup that grew from $5 million to $18 million in revenue would still interest them. Altman says AI-era growth has reset what investors expect, so numbers that used to win a round now raise questions.

Uncapped with Jack Altman · 2026-10-29 Permalink → Listen →
Uncapped with Jack Altman Around 22:31 into the episode
Jack Altman

five to 18. It's like, I don't know if you can raise. I don't know if there's capital there. Would you,

Ev Randle

I don't know, like, would you look at a five to 18? Or what would it take for you to look at it? You would need,

Jack Altman

and this, in this environment, you would need to believe an 18 to 100 story for the next year. Or you would just need to think that they were doing something that was so difficult and unique that it just had insane growth durability forever after. Yeah. But on the surface, That used to be enough where everybody would be super interested if all you heard was it's a software company like 5 to 18. Whereas now, if that's all you heard, you'd be like, Well, why wasn't it 5 to 40? That's right, you know, which is insane.

Ev Randle

It's so insane. But it's

Jack Altman

all because of this code pull.

Ev Randle

That's right. 100%. Which, you know, like a related topic that we've been talking about is that there's sort of two archetypes, or there's almost like a continuum of how levered you are to the trend. And then do you have like the old hallmarks of like durability, enterprise stickiness? Like some of…

Speaker names come from our own diarization. The position is estimated from where the line sits in the episode.
“If you touch some grass and you get out of San Francisco and you're like, what will actually make the world a better place? It's not that we're shipping software way faster and way more easily. It's things like people have better housing or people live longer or people live healthier or people have food or people have transportation. Like it's physical things.” — Jack Altman, Uncapped with Jack Altman

Altman introducing bio and robotics as the areas that excite him most. He argues there's a ceiling on how much software improvements alone can change the world, and notes that the AI labs are now building teams and buying data in both areas.

Uncapped with Jack Altman · 2026-10-29 Permalink → Listen →
Uncapped with Jack Altman Around 45:37 into the episode
Jack Altman

But maybe in 12 months, people could do a lot. That'd be amazing. People are, I think people see the urgency.

Ev Randle

Yeah.

Jack Altman

Hopefully. Maybe as a last topic, I think what's cool is the bio thing is interesting to me because I've kind of been of the view, I still am of the view, that all the software improvements that we're making are awesome, but there is a ceiling to how much that can improve the world. And if you like touch some grass and you get out of San Francisco and you're like, what will actually make the world a better place? It's not that we're shipping software way faster and way more easily. It's things like people have better housing or people live longer or people live healthier or people have food or people have transportation. Like it's physical things. I just think there's a limit to what you can get when it's all sort of in the in the screen. And bio to me would be like one of the very best possible things if we're discovering drug targets and finding amazing new drugs quickly or at all. That would be, what are you laughing about? So anyway, you were on a good tirade. I was on a good tire. So anyway, but I think that it is both really promising and it seems like it's on the horizon. Same with robotics, by the way. Very similar. Those are the two…

Ev Randle

I think that's, and that's the, there's this really weird sort of like inverse relationship between, I completely agree. I feel like the, you want the rest of America who doesn't have like an amazing, I think, view on AI, or at least a lot of people don't throughout the world and in America don't…

Jack Altman

makes a better world. That's

Ev Randle

what makes a better world.

Speaker names come from our own diarization. The position is estimated from where the line sits in the episode.
“If you're Eli Lilly and all of your data lives in Anthropic. And then Anthropic's like, hey, by the way, BTW, we got some drugs coming. You're like, okay, well, I don't feel so good now.” — Jack Altman, Uncapped with Jack Altman

Jack Altman on why big enterprises may want open-source models they control rather than depending entirely on a frontier lab that could one day compete with them. The sentence begins in Ev Randle's preceding turn ("If you're Eli…").

Uncapped with Jack Altman · 2026-10-29 Permalink → Listen →
Uncapped with Jack Altman Around 33:11 into the episode
Jack Altman

if you're Eli Lilly, no special

Ev Randle

sauce. If you're Eli

Jack Altman

Lilly and all of your data lives in Anthropic. Yeah. And then Anthropic's like, hey, by the way, BTW, we got some drugs coming. You're like, okay, well, I don't feel so good now. Right. So I think there are some reasons that people won't want to do that. And then I think, you know, there's situations where you can post-train on open source and that can be useful. And if you've got a lot of data, that data can outperform, you know, the extra intelligence that you might get from the next model. And so you'll see some of that too. I

Ev Randle

feel like we hear that pretty consistently from founders that are using, you know, that don't necessarily aren't even selling an AI product, but just have a big product corpus and they're using AI throughout their products. Where they're like, look, you can really like, if you really spend the…

Jack Altman

but then, you know, it's like the nice thing is we know the answer. The market's telling us the answer. And the answer is that the inference companies in combination are doing mid-single digits worth of total revenue. Yeah. That's a reasonable proxy for open source because that's where it's…

Ev Randle

I think, yeah. So I think the synthesis between these two is that, you know, again, shout out Eric Vishria. It all works. It all works. But also like the way it all works is like these actually, they're probably not even rivalrous to each other. And I don't know if this would be the case, but like…

Speaker names come from our own diarization. The position is estimated from where the line sits in the episode.

Collections They Appear In