a16z crypto partner Ali Yahya announced his departure and will establish an AI company

a16z crypto partner Ali Yahya posted on X that he has decided to leave a16z, move to San Francisco, and start a company. He stated that he has been with the company for nearly 10 years, and when he met Chris Dixon, Ben Horowitz, and Marc Andreessen in 2017, he was an engineer at Google Brain working on robotics research, with a strong interest in open source but no knowledge of investing.

Ali Yahya mentioned that at that time, Chris Dixon had already laid the groundwork for a16z in the early crypto space by investing in companies like Coinbase, but the company's crypto team consisted of only Chris Dixon, and he hoped to expand the team. Chris Dixon invited him to leave Google to help build the company's crypto business. He expressed that forming the team together and supporting founders' work has been the most meaningful experience of his life, and he thanked Chris, Ben, Marc, and the team.

Regarding his entrepreneurial direction, Ali Yahya stated that he is still in the early stages and is most focused on infrastructure that can support an open software ecosystem. He made two observations: current AI is mostly a technology for individual use, but in the future, it will shift towards collaboration among multiple people and multiple intelligent agents, potentially leading to large-scale open networks; the cost of software development has significantly decreased, allowing for on-demand generation and disposal after single use, which will change the software stack and may give rise to new operating systems mediated by AI and an AI-native developer ecosystem. He invited those working in related fields, especially those in the Bay Area, to communicate with him.