Artificial intelligence is reshaping software companies, jobs and the computing infrastructure supporting it, but major technological shifts have always led to better outcomes over time, according to Andreessen Horowitz co-founder Ben Horowitz.
“The history of technology is things have always gotten better,” he said last month at the a16z Connect/Fintech conference in Park City, Utah, even as he warned that AI can fuel fears that “nothing is worth anything.”
When Speed Becomes The Only Advantage
According to Horowitz, companies no longer have years to rely on a strong software product.
A product that once gave a company 10 years, or at least five years, may now offer “maybe five weeks,” he told a16z General Partner Alex Rampell. That shorter timeline is pushing companies built before AI to reassess what they still offer customers.
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Horowitz said companies can now spend heavily on GPUs and data to solve software problems that once took years. Companies also can no longer rely as much on customer lock-in because competitors can more easily copy code, move data and work around user interfaces.
“If you keep looking at it like the old world, and it’s got completely different laws of physics, you are definitely going to die,” he said.
For companies built before AI, that means pressure on products, pricing and strategy at the same time, Horowitz said.
The Hidden Limits Slowing The AI Surge
The AI race is also running into limits beyond software. Horowitz said at the conference the U.S. does not have enough rare earth minerals, electricity or manufacturing capacity for the AI buildout.
“Almost everything is a bottleneck,” he said.
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The country is already short on electricity, and building new capacity, including memory-chip factories, could take years, Horowitz said. Even if Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) makes enough chips, he said the AI buildout could still face shortages of memory and electricity.
In his view, America has to rebuild its infrastructure for the AI era “like right now.”
The Future Feels Unclear — Until It Isn’t
Horowitz said during the conversation that large technological shifts can be hard to understand while they are happening because people cannot always see what comes next.
He pointed to the decline of farming jobs and the rise of electricity as examples of changes that reshaped work and daily life. For Horowitz, those shifts can feel “scary” in the moment.
He also said humans keep finding new things they need, creating demand that earlier generations could not have imagined. “I think it’s very, very likely to be way, way, way better for everybody,” he said.
If AI is shortening the lifespan of traditional business advantages, some investors believe the biggest opportunities may come from identifying emerging companies before they ever reach the public markets.
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