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By Kimberly Tan, Joe Schmidt, Marc Andrusko, and Olivia Moore
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AI has become a strategic priority for virtually every enterprise: OpenAI claims
10% of the world’s systems now use their products, and many Fortune 500 companies have adopted CEO-led
mandates to
integrate AI.
However, AI companies behave differently from traditional SaaS businesses — much of the common wisdom about what worked for SaaS doesn’t seem to hold true. When we meet with founders, they consistently have questions around what great AI companies look like, where to expect product commoditization, and how to build a company with enduring value. Based on those conversations, we’ve synthesized some
overarching takeaways around how enterprise AI startups are adapting, growing, and breaking out today.
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More from a16z: Top Articles and Podcasts
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Martin Casado and Aaron Levie
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Box's cofounder and CEO unpacks how enterprise AI adoption differs from the consumer wave, why incumbents may be better positioned than people think, and how the role of the individual contributor is shifting from executor to orchestrator.
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Jennifer Li, Matt Bornstein, and Tristan Handy
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dbt Labs founder and CEO Tristan Handy explores the next chapter of data engineering — from the rise (and plateau) of the modern data stack to the growing role of AI in analytics and data engineering. The interesting question here, he argues, is human-in-the-loop versus human-not-in-the-loop.
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Michael King and Stacy D'Amico
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Analysts can either be powerful allies or quiet blockers. Putting effort into analyst relations early on can pay dividends in shaping buyer perception and clinching enterprise deals.
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Scott Woody and Martin Casado
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Metronome’s CEO explains how AI is fundamentally changing the value proposition of software — and why that shift demands a rethink of the traditional SaaS business model.
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Manu Sharma and Matt Bornstein
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Labelbox CEO Manu Sharma joins a16z Infra partner Matt Bornstein to discuss the evolution of data labeling and evaluation in AI, from early supervised learning to today’s sophisticated reinforcement learning loops.
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Seema Amble and Emily Boschwitz
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Vanta’s VP of Growth breaks down what real innovation with AI looks like in go-to-market teams today. Moving past hype, she and a16z partner Seema Amble discuss the tools, workflows, and feedback loops that are actually moving the needle.
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Michael Chime and Kimberly Tan
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The CEO and cofounder of Prepared, an AI emergency response platform, reveals how AI is transforming public safety — starting with 911 call centers.
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Joel de la Garza and David Mytton
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Arcjet CEO David Mytton discusses the increasing complexity of managing who can access websites and other web apps. One challenge: determining whether automated traffic is coming from bad actors and bots — or whether it’s AI agents trying to buy a product on behalf of a real customer.
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We’re backing the world-class team behind virtually every major recent AI research and product breakthrough: RL (PPO, TRPO, GAE), reasoning, multimodal, Character, and, of course, ChatGPT.
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An AI-powered desktop assistant that delivers real-time support during everyday moments — whether meetings, customer support calls, project brainstorming sessions, or collaborative tasks.
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Announcing a $131 million Series C to deliver a concierge customer experience.
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A grid operator for LLMs that handles failover, load balancing, and routing so developers can focus on building. Additionally, the platform gives users a single API to access hundreds of LLMs.
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Disclosure
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You are receiving this newsletter since you opted in earlier; if you would like to opt out of future newsletters, you can unsubscribe immediately.
This newsletter is provided for informational purposes only, and should not be relied upon as legal, business, investment, or tax advice. You should consult your own advisers as to those matters. This newsletter may link to other websites and certain information contained herein has been obtained from third-party sources. While taken from sources believed to be reliable, a16z has not independently verified such information and makes no representations about the enduring accuracy of the information or its appropriateness for a given situation.
References to any companies, securities, or digital assets are for illustrative purposes only and do not constitute an investment recommendation or offer to provide investment advisory services. Furthermore, this content is not directed at nor intended for use by any investors or prospective investors, and may not under any circumstances be relied upon when making a decision to invest in any fund managed by a16z. (An offering to invest in an a16z fund will be made only by the private placement memorandum, subscription agreement, and other relevant documentation of any such fund which should be read in their entirety.) Past performance is not indicative of future results.
Charts and graphs provided within are for informational purposes solely and should not be relied upon when making any investment decision. Content in this newsletter speaks only as of the date indicated. Any projections, estimates, forecasts, targets, prospects and/or opinions expressed in these materials are subject to change without notice and may differ or be contrary to opinions expressed by others. Please see a16z.com/disclosures for additional important details.
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