#259 Anjney Midha: a16z’s Strategy to Turn AI Startups into Unicorns

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What does it really take to turn cutting-edge AI research into a successful foundation model company?

In this episode of Eye on AI, we sit down with Anjney Midha, General Partner at a16z, to unpack how he helps scientists and researchers transform their breakthroughs into scalable, real-world AI businesses. 

From his early backing of Anthropic to launching Mistral and Black Forest Labs, Anjney shares a behind-the-scenes look at how AI infrastructure companies are born.

We dive into the critical challenges of model reliability, evaluation beyond academic benchmarks, and the rise of hybrid architectures combining transformers with diffusion and LSTMs.

If you're building in AI or investing in it, this is the roadmap to what's next.

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(00:00) Turning AI Research into Real Companies  

(02:08) Anjney’s Journey into Venture Capital  

(05:44) The Birth of Anthropic  

(08:26) Backing Mistral and Stable Diffusion  

(13:16) Are Transformers Really Enough?  

(18:36) Why AI Evaluation Is Broken  

(22:10) Making AI Models More Interpretable  

(28:38) The Real Potential of AI Agents  

(32:43) How a16z Spots AI Breakthroughs  

(37:45) Investing Like It’s the 1970s  

(43:31) What AI Voice Tech Needs Right Now

(46:32) Models vs Products  

(51:17) What’s Holding Back AI Agents  

(55:41) Anjney Startup Investing Strategy