a16z launches $1.1B Machine Age Fund to rebuild the physical AI stack
a16z · x · 2026-08-28
a16z announces the Machine Age Fund, a $1.1 billion fund for founders rebuilding what intelligence runs on: chips, memory, networking, systems software, power, and the machines that bring AI into the physical world.
Ben Horowitz calls it "the most important technology ever," requiring entirely new infrastructure — new chips, new system software, new approaches to power, even replacing copper. Raghu Raghuram notes that over the past three years models have improved steadily and the model is no longer the bottleneck; "the bottleneck is all south of the model," from servers, storage and networking down to copper mines.
Martin Casado and colleagues see a new economic law: a thousand engineers cannot erase a two-year software lead, but a massive GPU cluster turns capital directly into capability. Models are improving faster than the memory, interconnect, power, and cooling beneath them, and the strongest founding teams are moving from pure software into complex hardware because every constraint in the stack is now a company-sized opportunity.
Related event: a16z raises $1.1B Machine Age Fund to back AI's physical infrastructure(20 posts)→
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