Martin Casado on Anthropic vs OpenAI: Where Value Accrues & Why Open Source is a National Security Risk with China
20VC
Jul 28, 2025
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Martin Casado is a General Partner @ a16z where he leads the firms $1.25BN infrastructure fund. At a16z, Martin has led investments in companies like Cursor, dbt Labs, and Fivetran to name a few. Before joining a16z, he co-founded Nicira, acquired by VMware for $1.26B. At VMware, he served as CTO of Networking. Widely regarded as a visionary in enterprise infrastructure, Martin has helped shape the modern cloud computing stack.
In Today's Episode We Discuss:
– Analysis of Current AI Investment Landscape
– Will Anthropic Kill the AI App Layer?
– “The Oligopoly Is Coming—Just Like Cloud”
– Are AI Models Actually Terrible Venture Investments?
– Why it is BS to Put Down AI Apps for Having Temporary Revenue
– “Open Source Is a National Security Weapon—And We're Losing”
– “Have the Foundation Models of the Future All Been Founded Already”
– Why it is BS to Denigrate AI Apps for Having Low Margins
– Does AI Make 1x Engineers 10x or 10x Becomes 100x
– “We’re All Dead Wrong About AI and Job Loss”
– “The Only Sin in Venture: Backing the Wrong Winner”
– What People Think They Know About Wealth But Do Not
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