AI-native companies operate fundamentally differently from prior SaaS-era companies, running lean and constantly by deploying swarms of autonomous agents rather than employees typing at software.
David George describes visiting cutting-edge AI companies where researchers whisper instructions to running swarms of agents instead of typing, contrasting this lean, always-on model with the inefficiently-run SaaS companies of the previous generation. ✦ AI generated
David George · a16z Podcast · 2026-05-29 · original ↗
starts at this moment · 7:25
It's fun to see like the most cutting-edge companies when you go in, you know, all their researchers are sitting there and they're whispering in... they're not even typing. Like they're efficient, they're whispering in and they're running, you know, swarms of agents. The new companies are very lean, very aggressive, and they work all the time.
verbatim transcript · starts at 7:25
7:06software universe in terms of revenue added, you know, combined. Um and so um so yeah, they're they're not particularly tightly run, but they had great business models. And so they could grow and they could do well and everyone had a mandate to to buy more software and you know, head count grew and so so everything kind of worked out. The new companies are very lean, very aggressive, and they work all the time.
7:28>> Mhm. >> And so, uh you know, it's fun to see like the most cutting-edge companies when you go in, you know, all their researchers are sitting there and they're they're whispering in, you know, to the >> Yeah, so they're not typing agents. >> They're not even typing. Like they're they're are efficient they're like whispering in and they're running, you know, swarms of agents and um you know, I think that's kind of going
7:45to be the future. It's just really early. Um you know, this this I think the skew market is to be the skewmorphic phase is the, you know, I would say it's like everything that is reactive today. Like I think there's going to be a shift to proactive engagement both in consumer and in enterprise. Yeah. Um and, you know, we're starting to see it in some of the cutting edge
8:05>> [snorts] >> early stage companies that we're doing, but it's it's really, really early. >> Yeah. When when I think of our prior 10 to 12 months ago, you know, there's there's a couple of things that I think have have kind of changed. One's been re-reinforced, which was, you know, we always thought that the largest companies were going to continue to be an order of magnitude larger than we'd
8:22seen in prior cycles. >> Yes. >> And if anything that's accelerating. So, you know, you know, we've we've put out some data around the size of a top 1% exit doubling every 5 years or so. Um so, between 2020 and 2024, top 1% exit started at $10 billion. Um we updated those numbers in uh in February this year. Um and a top 1% exit for 25 in the first
8:442 months of 26 was then $20 billion. We just updated them yesterday. Um and if you look at just the exits that have closed, it's now at $32 billion. So, where is the is the threshold for the the top 1%? And and then if you then think about OpenAI and Anthropic coming in, um you know, potentially we could be north of $100 billion by by September. >> It's incredible.
9:07>> Which is just, you know, so we've 10xed >> Yeah. >> over [laughter] the space of kind of 24 months yeah what a top 1% exit looks like. >> Yeah. I mean, just the combination of those large companies I think is larger than the entire Russell 2000, if I'm not mistaken. >> Yeah. >> And so, the magnitude of these companies has just grown so great. And look, we've