a16z's big ideas to build in 2026

a16z's big ideas to build in 2026

1) Infrastructure
• Multimodal data: extract structure from documents, images, and videos for the enterprise
• Agent-native infrastructure: support massive "agent-speed" workloads
• Multimodal creative tools: give a model whatever form of reference content you have and work with it to make something new or edit an existing scene
• AI-native data stack: how AI agents navigate context problems + the evolution of BI tools
• Interactive video: starts feeling like a place we can actually step into

2) Consumer
• AI-native university: professors become architects of learning, curating data, tuning models
• Healthy MAUs emerge: consumers who aren't sick but want to monitor their health
• ChatGPT becomes the AI app store: developers can now tap ChatGPT's 900M users
• World models in storytelling: full 3D environments from text prompts

3) Crypto
• Privacy creates network effects: privacy differentiates chains and creates chain lock-in
• Prediction markets scale: become bigger, broader, and smarter
• Know your agent: agents will need cryptographically signed credentials to transact
• Staked media: not only embraces idea of having skin in the game, but supplies the proof

4) Enterprise + Fintech
• Systems of record lose primacy: the interface becomes a dynamic agent layer
• Vertical AI goes multiplayer: the collaboration layer becomes the moat
• Voice agents expand: handling entire workflows and customer relationship cycles
• AI-native banking infrastructure: streamlined and parallelized workflows

5) American Dynamism
• AI-native industrial base: companies built with simulation, automated design, and operations from day one
• Factory mindset: modular deployment of AI with skilled workers to make complex processes operate like assembly lines
• Physical observability: understanding what's happening in cities, power grids, in real time
• Autonomous scientific labs: labs that close the loop from hypothesis to experiment design