Casado: A top multimodal model was built by ~20 people for $2B+
a16z · x · 2026-08-21
a16z partner Martin Casado argues this venture age is unlike any before: one widely used multimodal model was built by a team of about 20 people at a cost of probably over $2 billion. He calls it unheard of in engineering history that such a small team could productively deploy that much capital on a short timeline, framing it as a defining story of the AI wave.
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