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
• Al-native data stack: how Al agents navigate context problems the evolution of BI tools
• Interactive video: starts feeling like a place we can actually step into

2. Consumer

• Al-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 Al 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 Al goes multiplayer: the collaboration layer becomes the moat
• Voice agents expand: handling entire workflows and customer relationship cycles
• Al-native banking infrastructure: streamlined and parallelized workflows

5. American Dynamism

• Al-native industrial base: companies built with simulation, automated design, and operations from day one
• Factory mindset: modular deployment of Al 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

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