a16z’s $1.1B Machine Age-fond sigter mod AI-hardware og datacentre

Andreessen Horowitz meddelte den 28. august 2026, at de har rejst $1.1 billion til et nyt investeringsinstrument, Machine Age Fund, som vil støtte virksomheder, der bygger den fysiske infrastruktur, som kunstig intelligens kører på.

Meddelelsen, offentliggjort på firmaets hjemmeside og forfattet af Ben Horowitz, Martin Casado, Raghu Raghuram, David Ulevitch og David George, lyder: “We’ve raised $1.1B for a16z’s newest fund: the Machine Age Fund.”

Ifølge indlægget vil fonden investere i al computerinfrastruktur, som AI kører på, herunder chips, hukommelse, netværk og lagring. Mandatet dækker også komplette systemer til at køre AI, der spænder over datacentre, robotteknologi og hjemme‑AI‑apparater. Forfatterne skrev, at hver af disse lag i AI‑stakken rammer grænsen for nutidens forsyningskædekapacitet og grænserne for fysik og datalogi, og de beskrev et akut behov for innovation og investering for at omstrukturere disse lag som platforme, “all the way down to the electricity.”

Indlægget konstaterer, at firmaet ser et opadgående vendepunkt i den nytte og variation af arbejde, som AI kan udføre i løbet af det seneste år. Efterhånden som AI udvikler sig fra chat til ræsonnement til kodning og andre former for vidensarbejde, skrev forfatterne, at både efterspørgslen efter arbejde og token‑intensiteten i arbejdet stiger med størrelsesordener.

Forfatterne sammenlignede skiftet med genopfindelser, der fandt sted i hver tidligere æra af beregning, og henviste til overgangen fra mainframe til client‑server og derefter til internettet, cloud‑ og mobilæraerne. De skrev, at det, der er anderledes denne gang, er omfanget og bredden af den nødvendige forandring for at følge med efterspørgslen, samt den hastighed, der kræves for at gøre det.

Tekniske tal nævnt i meddelelsen

The announcement listed several figures to describe the infrastructure buildout it intends to fund:

• Compute density per rack increased 28X from an H100 rack to a Rubin rack.
• Networking within a rack has grown similarly, hitting the limits of copper cabling.
• Rack power moved from roughly 5 to 10 kW to 100 to 250 kW to support today’s systems and will increase to 1 MW over the next three years.
• Data center scale is moving from tens to hundreds of megawatts and, in some cases, to gigawatt-scale campuses.
• Power is increasingly supplied not only from the grid but from grid plus behind-the-meter or captive sources.

The post states that faster and more efficient systems are needed, along with cheaper and higher-bandwidth memory across the memory hierarchy, faster and more scalable interconnects between nodes and systems, and power-efficient edge devices for AI to explore and interact with the world. It also cites the need for cooling, materials, electrical, and real estate buildout to support those systems. According to the authors, the hardware industry’s supply side is used to growing 20% to 30% per year at most, rather than the triple-digit growth they state is needed to catch up with demand.

Hardware Deal Flow, Prior Investments, and Team

The firm said hardware startups have grown from a small amount of its deal flow over the last couple of years to now over 20%.

The announcement states that a16z has recently backed a number of hardware companies, naming Unconventional AI, Nexthop, Volta, Atoms, Heron Power, and Mind Robotics. It also lists earlier hardware investments: the firm led the Series A in Skydio in 2016, invested in SpaceX (SPCX ), wrote its first check into Anduril in 2019, and was among the first venture investors in Waymo’s 2020 raise.

On team, the post states that Guido Appenzeller was the CTO of Intel’s Data Center Group, and that Raghu Raghuram and Martin Casado spent multiple decades in the data center space working on system software, much of which required deep hardware partnership. Shangda Xu and David George have led investments across the AI infrastructure stack, from silicon and networking to large-scale systems and compute platforms, according to the announcement. David Ulevitch and Erin Price-Wright lead many of the firm’s hardware and U.S. manufacturing investments through its American Dynamism practice.

Contributor biographies published with the announcement state that Casado leads the firm’s infrastructure practice, that Raghuram is a managing partner and a general partner on the Growth and Infrastructure investing teams, that Ulevitch leads the American Dynamism practice, and that George leads the Growth investing team. Horowitz is a cofounder and general partner of the firm.

The firm said the go-to-market, talent, and marketing machine it has built is now ready to serve hardware founders, and the post states that the a16z network has exceptional access to customers, suppliers, and others relevant to what the authors describe as a new age of hardware reinvention. The announcement closes by inviting founders who are reinventing AI hardware to contact the firm.

A disclosure published with the post states that a16z Capital Management is an investment adviser registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission.