The Hardware Pivot: a16z's $1.1B Bet That AI's Future Is Physical

Venture capital is executing a hard pivot from software to silicon, with the industry's biggest players betting that the next trillion-dollar AI opportunity isn't in algorithms—it's in the atoms, chips, and robots that make them run.

Evidence For

• a16z launched a $1.1 billion "Machine Age" fund explicitly focused on the physical infrastructure behind AI: chips, memory, interconnects, data centers, and robots. This marks a dramatic shift for a firm built on software...