Billionaires Andreessen And Horowitz Are Betting On Pro-AI Politicians Who Could Boost Their Massive Fortunes

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1:04In January, the Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz announced it had raised$15 billion in new funds. It was a monster fundraising haul that boosted the 17-year-old firm's assets to more than$90 billion, nearly double the amount it held in 2024. It also marked an opportunity for the firm's co-founders, Mark Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, to telegraph their lofty ambitions for how to remake the country and the world. In a blog post announcing the fundraise, Horowitz wrote, As the American leader in venture capital, the fate of new technology in the United States rests partly on our shoulders.

1:47Our mission is ensuring that America wins the next 100 years of technology. Perhaps he sounds a bit boastful, but his firm is already one of the winningest tech investors of the past year and decade. It first invested in OpenAI in April 2023, when it was worth$29 billion. The AI giant's valuation hit$852 billion in March and is expected to go public next year with a valuation north of$1 trillion. SpaceX, which Andreessen Horowitz first backed in 2023, went public in June at a$1.8 trillion valuation, a 13-fold return. Two months later, SpaceX acquired AI coding startup Cursor, another Andreessen Horowitz portfolio company.

2:38for$60 billion, a 150x return. The firm's also a key investor in software startup Databricks, which closed a funding round in August that valued the company at$190 billion, up from$47 million when it first invested. Andreessen Horowitz, better known as A16Z, has since raised another$5 billion through August, a collective haul that represents nearly 20 % of all venture capital funds raised in the U.S. so far in 2026, per pitch book. It's now far and away the largest venture capital firm in the country. It has more than$106 billion in assets under management as of March. Thanks to that mammoth fundraising, a wave of successful exits, and booming AI valuations, Forbes now estimates that Andreessen is worth$18.6 billion and Horowitz is worth$18.1 billion.

3:36That makes them the richest venture capitalists in the country, after Peter Thiel, whose stake in Palantir represents roughly half of his$37.8 billion fortune, and legendary venture capitalist John Doerr, worth$21.8 billion, who's been investing much longer. A representative for A16Z declined to comment. Andreessen and Horowitz have appeared on the Forbes Midas list of the top venture capital investors 27 times collectively. Meanwhile, the firm ranked number one on the recently released 2026 Strebuleev-Jackson AI Venture Ranking of the top 50 VC firms, compiled by Stanford professor Ilya Strebuleev and Ohio State professor Blake Jackson, who study the industry closely.

4:25Andreessen and Horowitz are now increasingly using their firm's might to influence government policy. Longtime Democrats, who donated a total of just$2.5 million between 2009 and 2022, they have since given$177 million, including$92 million in the current election cycle, much of it to Republicans. It started with an essay they published in 2023, announcing their intention to explicitly support political candidates for the first time. In the essay, Horowitz wrote, quote, We are nonpartisan, one-issue voters. If a candidate supports an optimistic, technology-enabled future, we are for them. If they want to choke off important technologies, we are against them.

5:13A16Z's co-founders first met in the 1990s at web browser startup Netscape, which Andreessen had co-founded with fellow billionaire Jim Clark in 1994. Horowitz was a product manager. After selling the firm to AOL in 1998 for$4.2 billion, the pair went on to co-found data center software company Opsware, which they sold to HP for$1.6 billion in 2007. Two years later, they launched Andreessen Horowitz from their Menlo Park, California office. Andreessen's father-in-law was the late legendary Silicon Valley real estate billionaire John Arriaga, who played a key role in developing what became the epicenter of VC investing.

5:57From the start, the two men set out to build a firm that would be markedly different from the storied VC shops of old. In 2012, Andreessen told Forbes, quote, We come into it having been entrepreneurs our whole careers. We have real insight into what you actually need when you're an entrepreneur. We're building the venture capital firm that we wish had existed when we were starting companies. That was an unusual approach in Silicon Valley at the time. Shrebuleyev says, quote, they built what was known as the founder-friendly model. Most VC firms are very small with just a few partners and a very careful selection of companies, and they don't have a lot of staff members.

6:37Andresen Horowitz built a different model where they said, for startups to succeed, we're going to help you. They hired a lot of people that helped startups with marketing, business development, legal, and more. For full coverage, check out Giacomo Tagni's piece on Forbes.com. This is Kieran Meadows from Forbes. Thanks for tuning in.

7:38We'll see you next time. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company affiliates and other insurers. Not available in all states.