Andreessen Horowitz has secured an impressive $15 billion in new funding, with $1.7 billion of that total allocated to its infrastructure team. This group manages many of the firm's most significant AI investments, such as Black Forrest Labs, Cursor, OpenAI, ElevenLabs, Ideogram, Fal, and numerous others.

Jennifer Li, a general partner on the infrastructure team who oversees investments like ElevenLabs—recently valued at $11 billion—along with Ideogram and Fal, has a clear perspective on how this fresh capital will be deployed. Her team is quite familiar with substantial budgets; when the firm raised $7.2 billion in 2024, the infrastructure vertical received $1.25 billion, more than any other team at the time.

So, what makes infrastructure so compelling, particularly looking ahead to 2026? It encompasses the full spectrum from chip design up through the software stacks developers rely on. This domain forms the core of AI development and is experiencing an unprecedented transformation, both in how AI is applied within these fields—like AI-assisted coding—and in the AI tools accessible to developers, such as ElevenLabs' voice models and Fal’s marketplace for multi-modal models.

As a result, Li operates at the forefront of today’s AI landscape, its trajectory into 2026, and an understanding of what is feasible—and what likely remains out of reach. She maintains a skeptical view toward some of the industry’s prevailing assumptions, including the notion that AI will soon supplant human creativity.

To dive deeper, listen to the full episode for insights on where Li identifies remaining gaps for startups constructing AI stacks, what distinguishes the most successful AI companies in her portfolio, why tools like voice AI are gaining prominence (even if they can sometimes feel unsettling), and which kinds of AI startups she is actively seeking to fund.