Where does consumer AI stand at the end of 2025?
As 2025 comes to a close, consumer AI is entering a new phase. A small number of products now dominate everyday use, multimodal models have unlocked entirely new creative workflows, and the big labs have pushed aggressively into consumer experiences. At the same time, it is becoming clearer which ideas actually changed user behavior and which ones did not.
In this episode, a16z consumer investors Anish Acharya, Olivia Moore, Justine Moore, and Bryan Kim look back on the biggest product and model shifts of 2025 and ahead to what 2026 may bring. They discuss why consumer AI appears to be trendi…
Watch on YouTube ↗
(saves to browser)
Chapters (18)
Introduction & Market Overview
0:35
Who Won Consumer AI in 2025?
1:22
Major Model and Product Launches
2:24
Image and Video Model Innovations
4:05
Product Sensibility and User Experience
6:40
Advances in Image and Video Models
9:11
Under-hyped Products and Productivity Apps
10:21
Prosumer Tools and Power User Workflows
12:56
Gemini vs. ChatGPT: Distribution and Brand
14:04
Product Nuances: Onboarding and Engagement
16:09
Social Features and Group Chat
19:26
Sora, TikTok, and the Status Game
21:02
Challengers: Claude, Perplexity, Grok
23:37
Meta, Grok, and Rapid Model Progress
26:54
Predictions for 2026: Enterprise, Apps, and Multimodality
32:02
Startup Opportunities and App Generation
36:27
Favorite Products and Recommendations
42:19
Building Consumer Products in 2026
Playlist
Uploads from a16z · a16z · 0 of 60
← Previous
Next →
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
a16z Podcast | Money, Risk, and Software
a16z
a16z Podcast | A Podcast about Podcasts
a16z
a16z Podcast | Wall Street's Most Hated Man -- A Conversation With Overstock.com's Patrick Byrne
a16z
a16z Podcast | How Big Companies Can Get the Most From Silicon Valley
a16z
a16z Podcast | The Role of Academia in the Startup World
a16z
a16z Podcast | AMPLab, the Power of Open Source, and the Future of Systems Software
a16z
a16z Podcast | Dell + EMC -- Why the Python Just Ate the Cow
a16z
a16z Podcast | Belief -- An Interview with Oprah Winfrey
a16z
a16z Podcast | What Comes After the Smartphone
a16z
a16z Podcast | Holy Non Sequiturs, Batman: What Disruption Theory Is ... and Isn't
a16z
a16z Podcast | Boards and the Power of Networks
a16z
a16z Podcast | 'The Most Boring Yet Valuable' 20 Minutes, All About Board Minutes
a16z
a16z Podcast | A Whirlwind Tour of Policy Issues in Tech
a16z
a16z Podcast | Beyond Lean Startups
a16z
a16z Podcast | Blockchain vs/and Bitcoin
a16z
a16z Podcast | Quantum Leap
a16z
a16z Podcast | Artificial Intelligence and the 'Space of Possible Minds'
a16z
a16z Podcast | Fintech from the World's Financial Capital -- London
a16z
a16z Podcast | Defeating Aging with Aubrey de Grey
a16z
a16z Podcast | On Recent IPOs and Comparing Private vs. Public Valuations
a16z
a16z Podcast | The Future of Food
a16z
a16z Podcast | Data Down on the Farm
a16z
a16z Podcast | The Data Science of Food and Taste
a16z
a16z Podcast | Using Social Tools to Build Homes for Those Most in Need
a16z
a16z Podcast | London Calling for Tech Done in a Different Way
a16z
a16z Podcast | Building Tech Startups in a Place Where Tech Isn’t Everything
a16z
a16z Podcast | Nootropics and the Best Version of Your Brain, Yourself
a16z
a16z Podcast | Scaling Ideas and Startups in the U.K. and Europe
a16z
a16z Podcast | The Tiger and the Dragon -- On Tech and Startups in India and China
a16z
a16z Podcast | Telepresence and Tech for a Distributed Workforce
a16z
a16z Podcast | The Present State and Future Possibility of Virtual Reality
a16z
a16z Podcast | The Year Mobile Began to Truly Dominate Tech
a16z
a16z Podcast | Writing a New Language of Storytelling with Virtual Reality
a16z
a16z Podcast | Andre Iguodala Knows Tech -- And Why the Warriors Won't Be Stopped
a16z
a16z Podcast | Mellody Hobson and Ben Horowitz Talk Investing, Career, and Star Wars!
a16z
a16z Podcast | The Future of Software Development
a16z
a16z Podcast | What Software Developers (and Therefore Every Company) Need
a16z
a16z Podcast | Making the Most of the Data That Matters
a16z
a16z Podcast | Harnessing the DevOps Movement -- Don’t Go Chasing Waterfalls
a16z
a16z Podcast | Nobody Discusses Work Software Outside of Work -- and Then There’s Slack
a16z
a16z Podcast | Software is What Distinguishes the Hardware Winners
a16z
a16z Podcast | The Fundamentals of Security and the Story of Tanium’s Growth
a16z
a16z Podcast | Things Come Together -- Truths about Tech in Africa
a16z
a16z Podcast | When Banking Works Like My Smartphone
a16z
a16z Podcast | Reinventing Insurance
a16z
a16z Podcast | How to Be Original and Make Big Ideas Happen
a16z
a16z Podcast | The Future of Money and Monetization
a16z
a16z Podcast | Building Affirm, and Why Max Levchin Has Watched Seven Samurai 100-Plus Times
a16z
a16z Podcast | Hall of Fame Football Meets Venture Capital
a16z
a16z Podcast | Breaking the Barriers of Human Potential
a16z
a16z Podcast | 'In the Eye of a Tornado': Views on Innovation from China
a16z
a16z Podcast | Open vs. Closed, Alpha Cities, and the Industries of the Future
a16z
a16z Podcast | Infrastructure... Is Everything
a16z
a16z Podcast | Mapping the Future of Virtual Reality
a16z
a16z Podcast | Mobile Falls Hard for Virtual Reality
a16z
a16z Podcast | Disruption in Business... and Life
a16z
a16z Podcast | Data Network Effects
a16z
a16z Podcast | The Dream of AI Is Alive in Go
a16z
a16z Podcast | I Reject the Term Viral Video
a16z
a16z Podcast | Truth and Humanity in Leadership
a16z
DeepCamp AI