Ben Horowitz on AI Infrastructure, Agents and the Mythical Man-Month

Key points

1. 1

   Every layer of the stack needs rebuilding

   Horowitz opens with a pattern: each major new technology forces a new infrastructure, and this one reaches further than any before it. His list runs from chips and system software down to power and the copper in the wires. For a founder, the opening sits in the physical stack below the model, built for an older style of computing.

   “not only do we need new chips, new system software, we need new ways of doing power, we need to replace copper”

2. 2

   Money now buys back a lead

   The old rule said you could not catch a company with a two-year lead by hiring, because a thousand new engineers wrecks your company. Horowitz says that rule broke. A rival can now spend $3 billion on a chip cluster and join the race, which is how he explains Grok and Kimi appearing from nowhere. Everyone, he says, is still adjusting to money working on almost any problem.

   “But it's not hiring a hundred thousand engineers. It's taking $3 billion and like lighting up a magnificent cluster”

3. 3

   Agents are a new type of employee

   Asked how a16z brings agents into the firm, Horowitz treats them as a second workforce with its own learning curve. He lists how they fail: they waste tokens and money, forget things, make things up, behave badly and create security holes. They can also be very productive. The open work is fitting them in beside the people they work with.

   “they can burn a lot of tokens and spend a lot of money and get nothing productive done”

4. 4

   Make people superhuman first

   Horowitz does not claim a16z has solved agents. He says the firm has not automated itself and he is not phasing out staff. His target is to make each person superhuman while keeping the bots from wrecking the place.

   “how do we make all our humans superhuman um without like wrecking the place um because the bots got out of control”