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Aug 22, 2024 | 
a16z.com | Alex Rampell |Marc Andrusko |Angela Strange |Anish Acharya
For centuries, the biggest goal of science was alchemy — to turn lead into gold. It turns out this is actually possible in nuclear physics and is called transmutation. Bombard mercury with neutrons in a nuclear reactor or particle accelerator…and presto! Gold. Today, thanks to AI, we are witnessing potentially the greatest transmutation in history. Software becomes labor. It’s the new E=MC2. Capital buys coffee, engineers, and GPUs. Out comes code that takes the role of labor.
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May 30, 2024 | 
detroitchamber.com | Anjelica Miller |Alex Rampell |Andreessen Horowitz |Varun Krishna
AI will begin replacing services that are traditionally expensive to do quickly, such as verification, validation, and other tedious tasks. AI saves time in building relationships and other “human” tasks. AI should work hand-in-hand with professionals and employees.
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May 13, 2024 | 
a16z.com | Alex Rampell |Bryan Kim |Anish Acharya |Angela Strange
Here’s a math puzzle:A good salesperson can sell 50 widgets a year, earns $100,000 a year, and will not take a pay cut. A company has an amazing new widget that needs to be sold (people will not find it on their own/aren’t looking for it). Prospective customers of this company’s new widget will happily pay $500/year, but not a dollar more. How will this company do? To quote Mean Girls: “The limit does not exist!” Or, more accurately, the company cannot exist.
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Sep 28, 2023 | 
a16z.com | Alex Rampell |Olivia Moore |Angela Strange |Joe Schmidt
Posted September 28, 2023 This content first appeared in the September 2023 Fintech newsletter. If you’d like more commentary and analysis about news and trends from the a16z Fintech team, you can subscribe here. Introducing the a16z Global Payments Hub Angela Strange, Alex Rampell, Joe Schmidt, Gabriel Vasquez Software is inherently global and easily transcends borders—localizing it can be as easy as translating the language.
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Sep 13, 2023 | 
a16z.com | Angela Strange |Joe Schmidt |Gabriel Vasquez |Alex Rampell
How cross-border infrastructure, instant payments, and open banking advances are creating a more integrated, financially inclusive world. Pinch to zoom in or out on the map. Use one finger to pan around the map. Tap highlighted countires and cities to find relative information. How cross-border infrastructure, instant payments, and open banking advances are creating a more integrated, financially inclusive world.
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Aug 30, 2023 | 
a16z.com | Alex Rampell
“Teldar Paper, Mr. Cromwell, Teldar Paper has 33 different vice presidents, each earning over 200 thousand dollars a year. Now, I have spent the last two months analyzing what all these guys do, and I still can’t figure it out.
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May 31, 2023 | 
a16z.com | Joe Schmidt |Sumeet Singh |Seema Amble |Alex Rampell
Posted May 31, 2023
Generative AI is Coming for Insurance Joe Schmidt Because underwriting, selling, and servicing rely so heavily on humans processing large quantities of written or verbal communication, existing tools have struggled to properly automate these services and materially impact loss ratios (losses on written premiums) and expense ratios (underwriting and servicing written premiums).
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Apr 19, 2023 | 
a16z.com | Angela Strange |Anish Acharya |Sumeet Singh |Alex Rampell
Artificial intelligence and machine learning have been used in the financial services industry for more than a decade, enabling enhancements that range from better underwriting to improved foundational fraud scores. Generative AI via large language models (LLMs) represents a monumental leap and is transforming education, games, commerce, and more. While traditional AI/ML is focused on making predictions or classifications based on existing data, generative AI creates net-new content.
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Apr 19, 2023 | 
a16z.com | Angela Strange |Anish Acharya |Sumeet Singh |Alex Rampell
Artificial intelligence and machine learning have been used in the financial services industry for more than a decade, enabling enhancements that range from better underwriting to improved foundational fraud scores. Generative AI via large language models (LLMs) represents a monumental leap and is transforming education, games, commerce, and more. While traditional AI/ML is focused on making predictions or classifications based on existing data, generative AI creates net-new content.
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Mar 28, 2023 | 
a16z.com | Alex Rampell
Visa and Mastercard currently facilitate more than three-quarters of all credit card transactions in the United States, at a time when post-pandemic Americans are now using credit or debit cards for roughly 57% of all transactions (in 2016, it was only 45%). Given the two companies’ long-standing dominance in the payments-processing space, what would it take to disrupt this duopoly and start a new payments Goliath? I’d like to direct your attention to the Target RedCard.
