The a16z Show
00:00:00 · Erin Price-Wright, Erin Price-Wright, Connor Love, Elena Burger
[00:00:00] S0: You don't have a defense industrial base without an industrial base. It's been a real wake up call [00:00:05] S1: that we need to get building again. [00:00:06] S2: AI will be a phenomenal tool that can be used in the physical world. The reality is AI cannot turn a wrench yet. [00:00:13] S1: The top 10 most valuable companies in the world, like, the majority of them are hardware companies. [00:00:17] S3: What's it like to visit one [00:00:19] S1: of these sites? You're building a physical thing. You're not sitting at a desk on your computer. You're out in the world. It sounds kinda sexy and romantic, but when you're actually doing it, it's rough. [00:00:29] S2: When you show up at Mariana, when you show up at Hadrian, when you show up at Castelion, you literally get people who are so passionate about what they're doing. That produces really good results. [00:00:38] S3: There's that very famous chart of, like, US power production versus China new energy production. What would it take to close that gap? [00:00:47] S1: I don't think that that is a technology problem. I think that that's a
00:00:47 · Erin Price-Wright, Erik Torenberg
[00:00:47] S1: I don't think that that is a technology problem. I think that that's a [00:00:52] S4: For decades, America moved much of its industrial capacity overseas. Now a new generation of founders is trying to build it back. In this episode, a sixteen z's Elena Burger sits down with Erin Price-Wright and Connor Love to unpack this year's eighty fifty, our list of companies shaping American dynamism. They look at the industrial base from end to end, the critical materials and energy that go in, the factories that turn those inputs into products, and the defense, robotics, and other systems that come out on the other side. Erin and Connor explain why those pieces are increasingly connected. A defense contract can help finance a new American factory, which drives down the cost of components that can later go into robots, cars, medical devices, and other commercial products. And AI is giving workers new ways to reconfigure production lines and rethink processes that have barely changed in decades. They also get into the rise of founders coming out of companies like SpaceX, Anduril, and Palantir, the flood of private capital into physical industries, and why rebuilding America's industrial base is increasingly becoming both a national priority and a major economic opportunity.
00:00:52 · Erik Torenberg, Elena Burger
[00:00:52] S4: For decades, America moved much of its industrial capacity overseas. Now a new generation of founders is trying to build it back. In this episode, a sixteen z's Elena Burger sits down with Erin Price-Wright and Connor Love to unpack this year's eighty fifty, our list of companies shaping American dynamism. They look at the industrial base from end to end, the critical materials and energy that go in, the factories that turn those inputs into products, and the defense, robotics, and other systems that come out on the other side. Erin and Connor explain why those pieces are increasingly connected. A defense contract can help finance a new American factory, which drives down the cost of components that can later go into robots, cars, medical devices, and other commercial products. And AI is giving workers new ways to reconfigure production lines and rethink processes that have barely changed in decades. They also get into the rise of founders coming out of companies like SpaceX, Anduril, and Palantir, the flood of private capital into physical industries, and why rebuilding America's industrial base is increasingly becoming both a national priority and a major economic opportunity. [00:02:00] S3: Connor and Erin, thank you so much for joining the podcast today. We're here to talk about eighty fifty and this year's list, And let's just get straight into things. I know a big theme of this year was the American industrial base. Can you talk about what we've learned this year and why that's such a big important theme right now?
00:02:00 · Elena Burger, Erin Price-Wright
[00:02:00] S3: Connor and Erin, thank you so much for joining the podcast today. We're here to talk about eighty fifty and this year's list, And let's just get straight into things. I know a big theme of this year was the American industrial base. Can you talk about what we've learned this year and why that's such a big important theme right now? [00:02:23] S1: We've been saying for a while, you don't have a defense industrial base without an industrial base. And I think this year really put that into perspective with conflicts going on in the world and realizing that the hollowing out of our industrial base that's happened over the last several decades actually has real consequences on the battlefield for soldiers, both American soldiers and our allies. And I think it's been a real wake up call in The United States that we need to get building again.
00:02:48 · Connor Love
[00:02:48] S2: Yeah. I mean, I think it's also something that is not just one factor, but it's multiple factors that are all kind of happening at the same time, and when you take a step back and you say, okay, world conflict, you have kind of a continued evolution of the capital markets, which I'm sure we'll talk about a bit later, about capital flowing into this ecosystem, but I think one of the bigger things is you actually have an entrepreneurial base right now, who is effectively raising their hand and saying, I'm gonna build in this ecosystem, that's incredibly important, not just for our nation, but also, you can build really valuable companies in. I think it's just this conglomeration of geopolitical factors, of capital markets, and then entrepreneurs that are all just coming together, and I think it's a really interesting time to be building, and it's a good time for us to be investing. When we looked at eightyfifty this year, we thought about where we're at in the history of American dynamism. And we're still early, but I think one theme that has evolved is you really need to start looking at American dynamism companies as a totality from end to end, from the input that comes out of the ground to the factory that makes the thing to the end system. So that's how we set up eighty fifty this year to think through those three lenses. Each one of those pillars is uniquely important to the end product or the end system. But in the end, like, I don't think people think that way. And a lot of the companies that are addressing, you know, things in our portfolio have thought from a inputs perspective, from a factory's perspective, and now from a systems perspective.
00:04:07 · Elena Burger
[00:04:07] S3: So one theory that a person could develop after looking at the list is, okay, we built out this industrial base for defense like building missiles and drones. But it's actually a tailwind now that's helping a lot of different industries So in there's energy, there's robotics, there's AI. Can you kind of talk about how all of these things fit together?