Reasoning Models Are Remaking Professional Services

In this episode of AI + a16z, a16z partner Alex Immerman sits down with Hebbia founder and CEO George Sivulka to discuss the potential for reasoning models and AI agents to supercharge knowledge-worker productivity — and the global economy along with it. As George explains, his customers are already saving significant time and and effort on important, but monotonous, tasks, and improved models paired with savvy users will continue to reshape how industries including finance, law, and other professional services operate. Follow everyone on X: George Sivulka // https://x.com/gsivulka Alex Immerman // https://x.com/aleximm Check out everything a16z is doing with artificial intelligence at https://a16z.com/ai/ , including articles, projects, and more podcasts. 00:00 - Quote 00:59 - Intro 01:15 - Scaling Laws 02:34 - Deepseek 04:26 - Deep Research 06:01 - Hebbia origin story 09:11 - AI for financial services 12:26 - A different approach to ‘chat’ interfaces 14:34 - What differentiates Hebbia in financial services 16:23 - Buy-side use cases 21:53 - Financial advisor use cases 23:26 - ROI on AI in 2025 25:46 - AI / Human Relationship 26:52 - Humans in the loop, designing Hebbia for AI literate professionals 28:42 - What does the industry look like in 10 years 32:35 - Pricing and business models 34:00- UX / UI 35:20 - What does success look like? 36:26 - Outro