Death of Software. Nah.

• AI creates more software demand, not extinction — every transition proved this.
  • 1995 PC shift: mainframes grew, spawned Google/AWS/Salesforce/Meta.
  • Retail: Amazon and Walmart both became trillion-dollar entities.
• Domain expertise becomes more valuable as AI raises sophistication floor.
• Disruption believers and skeptics both necessary — tension drives transition.
• Timelines always exceed investment horizons; “full disruption” callers are wildly optimistic.
  • Media “dead tree” predictions: more content exists today than 25 years ago.
  • Banking: 1995 had one-thousandth today’s features/options — expansion, not replacement.
• Some companies die (EMC, Sun, Lotus, Napster); new stack winners emerge.
• AI becomes embedded in product stacks — domains get vastly more sophisticated.

Steven Sinofsky (a16z Board Partner, ex-Microsoft Windows) · 2026-02-06 · Read on a16z.com