Ben Horowitz and David Solomon: The Sweetest Macro Spot in 40 Years

Goldman CEO David Solomon and a16z’s Ben Horowitz on why 2026 is the sweetest macro in 40 years — and why AI kills startup moats

• Solomon: fiscal stimulus + rate cuts + $400B capex supercycle + deregulation = macro cocktail hardest to slow in 40 years.
• Four largest companies (Apple/Google/Meta/Microsoft implied) contributed 1% of US GDP growth via $400B capex in 2024 alone.
• Horowitz: AI kills the mythical man-month moat — proprietary data + GPUs let incumbents throw money to erase startup leads, something never true in prior software eras.
• a16z captured 18.3% of all US venture capital raised in 2025 — from zero-reputation 2009 startup to category-dominant firm.
• Goldman launched “One GS 3.0”: six core processes being fully reimagined with AI; $6B tech spend in 2025, targeting $2B efficiency to reinvest in growth.
• Solomon: M&A answer shifted from “no” (4 years) to “maybe” — predicts 2026 will be biggest M&A year in history; biggest IPO year too.
• Goldman balance sheet $1.9T vs JPMorgan $4.5T — Solomon: “when JPM hits six, we’ll need at least three and a half” — scale gap is existential strategic risk.
• Horowitz: Biden admin debanked crypto firms and sent Wells notices to private companies — a16z lobbied Genius Act (stablecoin) into law; now pushing Clarity Act on market structure.
• Key AI policy fight: block state-by-state AI laws (50 different compliance regimes would kill innovation) and protect training on copyrighted data — China trains on everything regardless.
• Horowitz on agentic investing: skeptical models can outperform because black-swan inflections (biggest alpha sources) by definition aren’t in historical training data.

Guests: David Solomon (Goldman Sachs CEO), Ben Horowitz (a16z co-founder), David Haber (a16z general partner, host) · 2026-02-02 · Watch on YouTube