The a16z Show

Why is booking a doctor's appointment still so difficult, and can AI finally change that? Zocdoc CEO Oliver Kharraz argues that the real problem isn't finding doctors, but connecting patients to accurate availability and making appointments bookable wherever they start their search.
Oliver joins a16z General Partner Julie Yoo to discuss how Zocdoc spent nearly 20 years building the infrastructure behind online scheduling, and why it's now opening that technology to AI agents, insurers, and other platforms.
They explore Zocdoc's partnership with Gemini, why patients shouldn't be locked into a single healthcare platform, and how surfacing last-minute availability can reduce appointment wait times from weeks to days. They also discuss what happens when AI becomes a new front door to healthcare and why Oliver believes the future of Zocdoc extends far beyond its own app.

Resources:
Follow Oliver Kharraz on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kharraz
Follow Julie Yoo: https://x.com/julesyoo

Stay Updated:
Find a16z on YouTube: YouTube
Find a16z on X
Find a16z on LinkedIn
Listen to the a16z Show on Spotify
Listen to the a16z Show on Apple Podcasts
Follow our host: https://twitter.com/eriktorenberg

Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

a16z General Partner Martin Casado sits down with Grepr CEO Jad Naous to ask what comes after AI learns to write code: can it also debug and operate the systems that code creates?
Jad shares how AI has transformed engineering inside his 10-person team, cutting some projects from six months to just 10 days. But operating production systems is a harder challenge, with unpredictable workloads, failures, and countless possible states.
They discuss whether AI can learn to diagnose problems, test hypotheses, and debug systems like a human engineer. They also explore AI SREs, security, query optimization, and why the best engineers may be gaining the most leverage from coding agents.

Resources:
Follow Jad Naous on X: https://x.com/jadtnaous
Follow Martin Casado on X: https://x.com/martin_casado
Learn more about Grepr: https://www.grepr.ai/

Stay Updated:
Find a16z on YouTube: YouTube
Find a16z on X
Find a16z on LinkedIn
Listen to the a16z Show on Spotify
Listen to the a16z Show on Apple Podcasts
Follow our host: https://twitter.com/eriktorenberg

Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

a16z General Partner Alex Rampell sits down with VGS Executive Board Member, Terry Angelos, to unpack what happens to payments when AI agents go from recommending what to buy to actually making the purchase.
Terry explains the infrastructure required to safely give agents access to payment credentials, why wallets like PayPal, Shop Pay, and Link are competing to become the default payment layer for agents, and how new agentic tokens could preserve the chargebacks, identity checks, and merchant relationships that make today's payment networks work. VGS, which already secures payment credentials across a significant share of e-commerce, is now provisioning millions of these agentic tokens each week.
They also discuss what happens when merchants don't want to transact with agents, how delegated authority changes liability when an agent makes a mistake, and why AI could simultaneously increase consumer spending while eliminating the subscriptions, fees, and other forms of economic "breakage" that depend on people not paying attention.

Resources:
Follow Terry Angelos on X: https://x.com/terryangelos
Follow Alex Rampell on X: https://x.com/arampell

Stay Updated:
Find a16z on YouTube: YouTube
Find a16z on X
Find a16z on LinkedIn
Listen to the a16z Show on Spotify
Listen to the a16z Show on Apple Podcasts
Follow our host: https://twitter.com/eriktorenberg

Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

a16z Partner Lisha Li sits down with AI researcher and Trillium founder Nathan Lambert to ask how durable the gap really is between frontier AI labs and open models.
Nathan argues that OpenAI and Anthropic have structural advantages in compute, capital, and the ability to pioneer new training paradigms, but open-model labs, particularly in China, have proven remarkably capable of following close behind. They unpack how much of that comes from distillation versus technical talent, why compute remains a major constraint, and how data, RL environments, and post-training are increasingly shaping model progress.
They also discuss Nathan’s new nonprofit research lab, Trillium, and its plans to open up parts of AI research that are increasingly difficult to study from the outside. That includes releasing RL environments and documenting how AI is actually being used to automate AI research, with the goal of demystifying recursive self-improvement and giving researchers and policymakers a clearer picture of what frontier systems can and cannot do.

Resources:
Learn more about Trillium: https://trilliumlabs.org/
Follow Nathan Lambert on X: https://x.com/natolambert
Nathan Lambert’s Newsletter: https://www.interconnects.ai/
Follow Lisha Li on X: https://x.com/lishali88



Stay Updated:
Find a16z on YouTube: YouTube
Find a16z on X
Find a16z on LinkedIn
Listen to the a16z Show on Spotify
Listen to the a16z Show on Apple Podcasts
Follow our host: https://twitter.com/eriktorenberg

Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Could AI break the cryptography protecting everything from crypto wallets and banking to private messages? Recent advances in AI-driven mathematical research have sparked new warnings about the security of today's encryption systems, but how much of the concern is supported by evidence?
a16z crypto's Liz Harkavy is joined by Stanford cryptographer Dan Boneh, a16z crypto General Partner Eddy Lazzarin, and Research Partner Justin Thaler to separate what we know from what remains speculation. They explain why modern cryptography relies on mathematical assumptions, what OpenAI's recent results do and don't demonstrate, and how the potential threat from AI differs from quantum computing.
They also discuss why existing security practices and cryptographic alternatives offer reasons for confidence, the importance of building systems that can adapt if an assumption fails, and how AI could ultimately help researchers and developers make software more secure.

Resources:
Watch the original a16z crypto discussion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_CoOoDsZ5Y
Follow Eddy Lazzarin on X: https://x.com/eddylazzarin
Follow Dan Boneh: https://x.com/danboneh
Follow Justin Thaler: https://x.com/SuccinctJT
Follow Liz Harkavy: https://x.com/liz_harkavy
Learn more about a16z crypto: https://a16zcrypto.com/


Stay Updated:
Find a16z on YouTube: YouTube
Find a16z on X
Find a16z on LinkedIn
Listen to the a16z Show on Spotify
Listen to the a16z Show on Apple Podcasts
Follow our host: https://twitter.com/eriktorenberg

Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.