Marc Andreessen
Powerful person; can’t handle being questioned.
“I think many companies are not adopting AI while their employees are. And their employees are not necessarily telling the management what's happening. ... There's something about AI right now where it's much easier for the individual to adopt than it is the institution.”
a16z Podcast · Startups & Venture · October 2026
Asked whether AI's gains will go mostly to incumbents or to startups, Andreessen pointed to quiet adoption by employees inside companies that haven't officially adopted it. He predicted that some of those individuals will realize they can start their own businesses, and that startup formation will skyrocket.
Transcript
…full-time. I'm basically drowning with the pace development right now and the speed with which things are changing. And I'm trying to keep up with all of it. And it's nearly impossible. Like, yeah, the super empowered 24-year-old with AI is going to just achieve amazing things in the next decade.
…the companies like Meta and others have, you know, sort of adjusted very well. And also they're net new companies that are almost a trillion dollars in, you know, within a decade. And it's so, is that your read that that's effectively both? Or how do you think about this sustaining disruptive?
Well, the incumbents that are adapting are actually the incumbents, I think, for the most part that are actually going directly into AI. And then there are others. And then, you know, there are certain companies, you know, there are certain companies certainly in tech that are on the leading edge, even if they're not primary AI developers. But at least right now, the pattern is not that. I mean, it's just really actually, there's a very specific thing that I think of maybe as a topic for a different podcast. The very specific thing that I think is happening, which is I think many companies are not adopting AI while their employees are. And their employees are, and their employees are not necessarily telling the management what's happening. And by the way, I'm going to guess every single person listening to this podcast right now is thinking, oh, yeah, that's what I'm doing. I'm using AI to do all my work, or at least let's say fact check all my work proofread all my emails, even if not have them written out right. And so there's this weird thing where…
by the way, it already is. Oh,
yeah. I mean, we're seeing it. I mean, we're seeing it 100% for sure. So anyway, just to kind of go back to the theme of this is just I'm completely convinced. Like we're going to see a wave of like much more technically aggressive, much more business aggressive, much more expansionist, creative…
And by the way, the other thing I'd say is that the Christensen disruptive innovation frame assumes that sort of the technology world is relatively contained and that these are companies fighting with each other. I think it's probably the wrong frame right now, which is it's really sort of people…
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