a16z has raised $1.1bn to invest in the physical layer of AI
Andreessen Horowitz has closed a $1.1bn fund that will invest exclusively in hardware. The Machine Age Fund, announced on Friday, covers the physical layer artificial intelligence runs on, from chips to the buildings that house them.
The mandate takes in chips, memory, networking and storage, and then keeps going. Complete systems qualify too, defined broadly enough to stretch from data centres to robotics to AI appliances for the home.
Five partners put their names to the launch: Ben Horowitz, Martin Casado, Raghu Raghuram, David Ulevitch and David George. That is a lot of senior attention for a single vehicle, and a fair indication of how central the firm considers the thesis.
The case for it rests on physics rather than market sizing. Compute density has risen 28-fold between Nvidia’s H100 generation and its Rubin racks, and a rack that once drew 5 to 10 kilowatts now draws between 100...
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