FULL INTERVIEW: Martin Casado says AI is the first technology where you can put in $10 and reliably get something back. Everything before it was engineer, wait two years, cross your fingers. Check out our sponsor Lovable: ⁠https://lovable.dev.⁠ Turn ideas into software people love.@martin_casado is the @a16z GP behind the firm's investments in both Cursor and OpenRouter. Days after SpaceX closed the $60B Cursor deal and Stripe agreed to buy OpenRouter, he sat down with @theojaffee and @sophiadew to cover whether the labs win everything, when the subsidies stop, and why RSI is the wrong term:02:24 whether decades of experience still matter in AI03:48 what you would have done with a billion dollars ten years ago04:56 20 people, $2 billion, one model06:48 why more private capital grows the TAM rather than inflating it07:35 the a16z conversation about going all-in on AI, seven years before GPT08:39 why balance-sheet investors keep misreading these companies10:36 the full case for the labs winning everything12:12 why he thinks RSI is the wrong term, and what autocatalytic means13:42 the full case against the labs winning everything15:25 supply constraints easing in 2028, and his 80/60 split17:12 why models turned out to be much stickier than anyone assumed18:18 why real model routing is an AI-complete problem21:13 what happens when the subsidies stop21:36 how AI broke marketing, and why you can now buy users with a dollar23:30 the Chinese operations arbitraging $200 subscription plans25:43 the CMO is turning into a CFO29:46 why Cursor iterated faster than anything he's seen outside an Elon company32:21 what both deals say about strategic value versus business quality34:10 why he doesn't think a VC's job is to know where to build38:35 "as long as there's a hill for me to climb"

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Cursor, OpenRouter, and Where the Money Went | Martin Casado

MTS

Cursor, OpenRouter, and Where the Money Went | Martin Casado