Why Moats Still Matter (And How They've Changed)

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Why Moats Still Matter (And How They've Changed)

Plus: Need for Speed in AI Sales, The $700 Billion AI Productivity Problem No One’s Talking About, and Fundraising News

a16z Enterprise

Dec 19, 2025

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Why AI Moats Still Matter (And How They’ve Changed)

a16z General Partners David Haber, Alex Rampell, and Erik Torenberg discuss why 19 out of 20 AI startups building the same thing will die - and why the survivor might charge $20,000 for what used to cost $20.

They expose the “janitorial services paradox” (why the most boring software is most defensible), explain why OpenAI won’t compete with your orthodontic clinic software despite having 800 million weekly users, and reveal how non-lawyers are building the most successful legal AI companies.

Articles

Need for Speed in AI Sales

Seema Amble

and

James da Costa

·

November 21, 2025

For years, enterprise sales has followed a well-defined playbook: educate the market, run a pilot, prove a business case, negotiate security and procurement, and then go live. With AI, the pace and needs of that classic sales process have changed. Today’s buyers of AI products come in eager to try and know more, demand more proof of ROI earlier, expect …

Read full story

Where You Build Is Who You Are: The ElevenLabs Story

a16z

Where you build is who you are: the ElevenLabs story

San Francisco is the hub of AI. However, not all model companies should be built in the same ten square miles atop the peninsula. ElevenLabs is one of my favorite examples of why having a unique origin story (born out of frustration with Polish single-narrator voiceovers), a unique set of…

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a year ago · 44 likes · Jennifer Li

WATCH MORE

The $700 Billion AI Productivity Problem No One’s Talking About

Russ Fradin sold his first company for $300M. He’s back in the arena with

Larridin

, helping companies measure just how successful their AI actually is.

In this episode, Russ sits down with a16z General Partner Alex Rampell to reveal why the measurement infrastructure that unlocked internet advertising’s trillion-dollar boom is exactly what’s missing from AI, why your most productive employees are hiding their AI usage from management, and the uncomfortable truth that companies desperately buying AI tools have no idea whether anyone’s actually using them.

The same playbook that built comScore into a billion-dollar measurement empire now determines which AI companies survive the coming shakeout.

Investments

Gamma

: Series B at a $2.1B valuation led by a16z

Read more →

This newsletter is provided for informational purposes only, and should not be relied upon as legal, business, investment, or tax advice. Furthermore, this content is not investment advice, nor is it intended for use by any investors or prospective investors in any a16z funds. This newsletter may link to other websites or contain other information obtained from third-party sources - a16z has not independently verified nor makes any representations about the current or enduring accuracy of such information. If this content includes third-party advertisements, a16z has not reviewed such advertisements and does not endorse any advertising content or related companies contained therein. Any investments or portfolio companies mentioned, referred to, or described are not representative of all investments in vehicles managed by a16z; visit

https://a16z.com/investment-list/

for a full list of investments. Other important information can be found at

a16z.com/disclosures

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