Andreessen Horowitz has secured a fresh $15 billion in new funding, with a significant $1.7 billion earmarked for its infrastructure investment team, underscoring the firm’s growing conviction that AI infrastructure remains the backbone of the next technology cycle. The allocation will strengthen the team behind some of the venture firm’s most prominent AI bets, including OpenAI, ElevenLabs, Cursor, Ideogram, Black Forest Labs, Fal, and several others shaping the current generation of AI tools.
Jennifer Li, a general partner at a16z who leads the infrastructure team, said the new capital reflects a clear thesis about where value is being created as AI systems scale. Having overseen investments such as ElevenLabs, which was recently valued at $11 billion, Li argues that infrastructure is no longer a quiet layer beneath applications but the engine driving everything from model performance to developer productivity. This marks a continuation of the firm’s strategy. When a16z raised $7.2 billion in 2024, the infrastructure unit also received the largest internal allocation, at $1.25 billion.
According to Li, what makes infrastructure especially compelling in 2026 is its breadth. It spans chip design, cloud and compute layers, developer tools, model marketplaces, and the software stacks that allow AI systems to be built and deployed. This layer is experiencing rapid change, not only because AI is being used to build infrastructure itself, such as AI assisted coding, but also because developers now have access to increasingly powerful tools, including voice models and multimodal platforms that were not viable at scale just a few years ago.
Despite the excitement, Li remains cautious about some of the industry’s more sweeping claims. She has expressed skepticism about the idea that AI will replace human creativity in the near term, arguing instead that the most successful companies will combine strong technical foundations with human judgment and taste. Speaking on TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, she pointed to a growing talent crunch among AI native startups, the underestimated importance of search and data infrastructure, and a shift in what investors now consider fundable in an increasingly crowded market.
As the AI race intensifies, a16z’s latest fundraise signals a belief that long term advantage will be decided less by flashy applications and more by the quality of the underlying infrastructure. With billions now committed, the firm is positioning itself to shape not just the next wave of AI products, but the rails on which the entire ecosystem will run.