Speaker · Updated
Ben Horowitz: latest market views
Andreessen Horowitz (a16z)
Summary
Ben Horowitz is a cofounder and general partner of venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), a former cofounder and CEO of LoudCloud/Opsware, and author of 'The Hard Thing About Hard Things'.
Chorus has 15 views from Ben Horowitz across 3 episodes on a16z Podcast and All-In Podcast since October 17, 2026. Their latest calls: bullish on CoreWeave and OpenAI; bearish on Anthropic.
Where they stand
Their latest bullish or bearish call on each company.
What they talk about most
The latest views
Newest first. Every quote is checked against the episode's transcript.
The software industry has poor security architecture, and the reckoning is here, creating opportunity for new companies.
Horowitz says the industry did not architect security well, from large systems to embedded devices, and that the day of reckoning is here. He argues specialization has been the worst case for security. Security engineers are scarce and often do not work well with other engineers, so most software companies' security practices are weak for writing software. He sees the AI-driven threat as clear and present rather than theoretical, which he calls a big opportunity for new companies and efforts. He adds that tools now exist to help fix this.
“we, as an industry, did not do a great job of architecting everything from the big systems to embedded devices with good security architecture. And the day of reckoning is here.”at 43:57
a16z Podcast: Amazon CEO Andy Jassy on Why Amazon Is Investing $220 Billion in AI ·
Some VCs buying old companies to cut costs with AI show few ideas; building new things is more exciting.
Horowitz says AI lets firms cut costs, such as reducing accountants or lawyers, and that some venture capital firms now plan to buy old companies and cut their costs. For his firm this has never been interesting, because if that is the whole idea, the firm has very few ideas. He finds building something the world has never seen before much more exciting, and says a third path, rethinking a successful product around a new platform as Amazon did with Alexa, is also interesting.
“there's actually venture capital firms that now are like, okay, we're going to go buy old companies and cut their costs. And that's never been that interesting to us because we're like, okay, if that's your idea, you have very few ideas.”at 46:29
a16z Podcast: Amazon CEO Andy Jassy on Why Amazon Is Investing $220 Billion in AI ·
AI will create a new media form that is not a movie, with stories that were previously unviable.
Horowitz says some in the film industry have embraced AI while others have buried their heads in the sand. He expects AI to create a new media, with AI films being something very different from movies. AI will also make regular movies more efficient, but the stories that can be told will be completely different. He argues that this kind of filmmaking has been barely viable even for a director like Christopher Nolan, and now everybody will be able to do it.
“what's going to happen with movies is there's going to be a new media... I think the AI film is not going to be a movie. It's going to be something very, very different.”at 36:34
a16z Podcast: The Frontier Ideas a16z Wants to Fund | Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz & Chris Dixon ·
Reward hacking is AI's biggest safety problem, and labs underinvest in it; open weights would let more people work on it.
Horowitz argues that reward hacking, where an AI does something not asked as a means to an end to get its reward, is probably the biggest AI safety problem. He says the labs haven't worked on it very hard because they are busy racing each other. He argues that if PhD students, professors and universities could examine the weights, they might solve it. He concludes that only one company working on the problem is not enough.
“probably the biggest safety problem is this reward hacking phenomenon... the labs so far haven't really worked on that very hard for whatever reason, know, they're busy kind of racing each other.”at 44:26
a16z Podcast: The Frontier Ideas a16z Wants to Fund | Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz & Chris Dixon ·
Today's AI build-out differs from the 2000 bubble because AI has real excess demand, unlike the internet's demand shortfall.
Horowitz compares AI to the dot-com bubble. In 2000, the internet had too much bandwidth and too few consumers to absorb it, so the lack of demand killed the companies. Today there is no lack of demand in AI, so he thinks the dynamics will be different. He still concedes that a pathological debt situation can wreck anyone, and the build-out is financed with large amounts of debt, though smaller than in 2000.
“We don't really have a lack of demand in AI so I think the dynamics will be different.”at 15:43
All-In Podcast: CoreWeave Crash, AI Trade Cracks, Anthropic IPO Red Flags, Bill Gates Doomer ·
AI infrastructure & data centers
Neocloud arbitrage is dangerous: leveraged long-term capacity can be wiped out when prices collapse, as in 1999-2001.
Horowitz explains why he and Marc Andreessen passed on the neocloud model. In 1999, bandwidth cost $1,500 per megabit and had to be bought on three-year contracts. By 2001 it cost $50, so anyone holding borrowed bandwidth was wiped out. Neoclouds are arbitrage businesses where a company can easily end up upside down. He says that kind of price collapse is outside the entrepreneur's control, which is why it scared him. Today's AI shortage is a different dynamic, but the structural risk of leveraged capacity remains.
“it can end up being, like, a very dangerous arbitrage business where, you know, you can get upside down easily.”at 16:53
All-In Podcast: CoreWeave Crash, AI Trade Cracks, Anthropic IPO Red Flags, Bill Gates Doomer ·
CoreWeaveBullish
CoreWeave benefits from a GPU, power and data-center shortage; supply is sold out and prices are rising.
Horowitz argues that CoreWeave's core business is supported by a real shortage, not an oversupply. GPU durations have lengthened from 3-5 years to 6-8 years, and GPU prices have held even as token prices fell. Data-center space costs are rising because labor and politics make building hard, and demand is not subsiding. Andy Jassy told him Amazon is out of everything until 2028, so CoreWeave's supply is valuable. He says these tailwinds hold despite tough debt markets. He is not invested in neoclouds because of the debt risk.
“token prices have gone down, but GPU prices have not. And so things are going up... those are very big tailwinds for CoreWeave despite the fact that the debt markets kind of independent of them are tough.”at 17:58
All-In Podcast: CoreWeave Crash, AI Trade Cracks, Anthropic IPO Red Flags, Bill Gates Doomer ·
AnthropicBullish
Anthropic's IPO will be fine; he is not worried about demand for the offering.
Horowitz says the IPOs of the two biggest AI labs will be fine. He is not sure of the price (for example $2 trillion versus $1.75 trillion), but the offerings are a big number yet not unprecedented, since SpaceX just did a similar-scale raise. He says OpenAI and Anthropic threaten almost everything in a portfolio, so investors will want to own them. He is not worried about demand for the IPOs.
“For sure with respect to the Anthropic and the OpenAI IPOs... My belief is those are gonna be fine... I'm not worried at all about the demand for those IPOs.”at 27:25
All-In Podcast: CoreWeave Crash, AI Trade Cracks, Anthropic IPO Red Flags, Bill Gates Doomer ·
OpenAIBullish
OpenAI's IPO will be fine; investor demand for the offering is not a concern.
Horowitz applies the same view to OpenAI as to Anthropic. He thinks the OpenAI IPO will be fine and that investors will be keen to own it. He reasons that OpenAI and Anthropic threaten almost everything in a public-market portfolio, so there is little else to hold that offers equivalent AI exposure. He is not worried about demand for either offering. He does not give a price target.
“I'm not worried at all about the demand for those IPOs. So you have to own those”at 28:06
All-In Podcast: CoreWeave Crash, AI Trade Cracks, Anthropic IPO Red Flags, Bill Gates Doomer ·
Software prices fall under AI but software volume rises sharply, so products must get far better.
Horowitz argues that AI will push software prices down while the amount of software rises sharply, the Jevons paradox of software. Companies like ElevenLabs expand beyond software into licensing, celebrity voices and dubbing, because software is easier to write and models can be trained on nuanced cases. Startups must evolve and their products must get much better, and the value will sit in those products rather than in plain software.
“Software prices will definitely go down, but the amount of software is going way way up. It's the Jevons paradox of software.”at 36:07
All-In Podcast: CoreWeave Crash, AI Trade Cracks, Anthropic IPO Red Flags, Bill Gates Doomer ·
Regulatory changes in the 1990s-2000s pushed growth into private markets, widening the wealth gap.
Horowitz argues that late-1990s and early-2000s regulatory moves made public markets much less attractive for companies. Private markets grew to absorb that business, which he calls very bad for America because it has widened the wealth gap. He distinguishes mega-rounds for OpenAI and Anthropic, which are no longer typical venture rounds, from typical venture investing.
“This is just like we did a lot of regulatory moves in the late nineties and early two thousands, which really made the public markets much less attractive for companies, and the private markets grew to absorb that business, which has been, I think, very bad for America.”at 49:01
All-In Podcast: CoreWeave Crash, AI Trade Cracks, Anthropic IPO Red Flags, Bill Gates Doomer ·
AnthropicBullish
Anthropic's IPO will be fine across the $1.9-2.3T valuation range; it is a very important company.
Horowitz acknowledges that revenue growth slowed sharply from Q2 to Q3 and that recurring revenue is unclear, which is driving the debate. Even so, $16.8B in one quarter is crazy. He says the IPO will be fine whether it prices at $1.9T, $2T or $2.3T, and that the valuation is what people are arguing about. He notes that negative news about the big labs hits everyone in the supply chain.
“So I think the IPO will be fine, like, whether it's, you know, you wanna be in at 2,000,000,000,000 or 1,900,000,000,000 or 2,300,000,000,000.”at 50:45
All-In Podcast: CoreWeave Crash, AI Trade Cracks, Anthropic IPO Red Flags, Bill Gates Doomer ·
AnthropicUncertain
Financing risk is Anthropic's biggest threat; it should raise at least $200B rather than optimize valuation.
Horowitz, a former CEO who nearly ran out of cash many times, says the thing most likely to stop Anthropic is financing risk. The company faces many other risks, including supply chain, competition and Chinese open-source models, so there is no reason to add financing risk on top of them. He calls $200B the minimum, while admitting he is not deep enough to say whether $250B or $150B is right. Founders should raise cash for resilience rather than chase valuation.
“I agree with this sentiment, which is the only thing that's gonna... Or the thing most likely to stop the company is financing risk. And so why take it?”at 57:19
All-In Podcast: CoreWeave Crash, AI Trade Cracks, Anthropic IPO Red Flags, Bill Gates Doomer ·
AnthropicBearish
Anthropic is negligent on its own security and hypocritical to warn about others' software.
Horowitz argues Anthropic has poor operational security, citing the leak of Claude Code, a crown-jewel asset. He describes a firm test using Opus 4.5 to build a pet-store website and then probe it: an agent found the SQL injection and used it to steal all the customer data. When he reported this to Anthropic, the company said he had prompted it wrong. He sees hypocrisy in Anthropic posting theoretical scenarios about other people's software while its own model produces exploitable code. He also argues Anthropic's complaints about distillation are weak: it trained on the works of authors and scientists, and distillation is a terms-of-service violation, not illegal.
“Anthropic is one of the most negligent companies that we've ever seen in terms of security, of their own security.”at 1:12:53
All-In Podcast: CoreWeave Crash, AI Trade Cracks, Anthropic IPO Red Flags, Bill Gates Doomer ·
Recursive self-improvement risk is entirely theoretical; none of Databricks' four preconditions are met.
Horowitz uses Ali Godzi of Databricks' four preconditions for models running away through recursive self-improvement: each next model must need far fewer GPUs, take less time to train, be more accurate, and this must keep repeating. He argues GPUs, debt, power and cooling make building the next model slow, so it is not running away. He says none of the four conditions are being met and the labs show no sign otherwise, so the risk is entirely theoretical. He calls the Anthropic and Bill Gates argument on this risk super dangerous, arguing it is less likely than the pandemic that gain-of-function work was meant to prevent, and that the press eats it up because it fits a narrative.
“Zero of those four have been met. We're not on track for any of those four to be met unless something is going on in the big labs that we don't know about.”at 1:28:35
All-In Podcast: CoreWeave Crash, AI Trade Cracks, Anthropic IPO Red Flags, Bill Gates Doomer ·
Shows
- a16z Podcast · 2 episodes
- All-In Podcast · 1 episode
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