Feb 2, 2026 · 35m · a16z
Ben Horowitz and David Solomon: The Sweetest Macro Spot in 40 Years
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon and Andreessen Horowitz co-founder Ben Horowitz join host David Haber to discuss institutional scaling, current macroeconomic tailwinds, capital market expectations, and the strategic deployment of artificial intelligence. Together, they offer high-level perspectives on enterprise strategy, regulatory policy, and navigating the global economic landscape.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. How this is scored →
The host as informed peer 2.0 Guest teaching 4.6 Guest disagreement 1.2 The host pushing back 0.0
speaking balance: gold is the host, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 23:55 Ben calling out government debanking and regulatory abuse
Ben forcefully condemns the previous administration's crypto crackdown, citing debanking tactics and unprecedented Wells notices issued to private companies as government abusive power.
Hardest push from the host ▶ 33:29 Solomon challenging AI agentic investing hypeSolomon pushes back against the premise that AI models can master investing, pointing out that outperformance relies on novel events outside historical dataset models.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 8:25 Solomon explaining systemic bank balance sheet riskSolomon educates the audience on financial institution liquidity, explaining how Goldman transitioned from being the world's largest wholesale funder to holding $500 billion in deposits.
The host holds their own ▶ 1:10 Justin citing Charles Ellis and Goldman's organic partner modelJustin demonstrates deep historical knowledge of Goldman Sachs by citing Charles Ellis's 'The Partnership' and detailing how partners built global franchises brick-by-brick.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | The host as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | The host pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The a16z Show Title Card | 6 | 3 | 1 | 0 | Justin shows strong context by citing Charles Ellis's book 'The Partnership' and detailing Goldman's organic growth history. Ben playfully adds historical nuance about Goldman and Sachs falling out during World War I while Solomon explains the structural need for permanent capital. | |
| Strategic Focus Areas for Modern Banking Institutions | 2 | 6 | 0 | 0 | Solomon delivers an educational monologue breaking down US banking balance sheets, scale disparities with JPMorgan, and the critical transition from fragile wholesale funding to deposit platforms. Justin only chimes in briefly to supply the phrase 'commercial paper'. | |
| The Scaling Strategy and Mission of Andreessen Horowitz | 1 | 5 | 1 | 0 | Ben Horowitz outlines the evolution of venture capital from top-tier reputational dominance to scaling firm operations across 150 companies. He references advice from Dave Swenson and Andy Grove on leading and expanding an industry. | |
| Analyzing the Current Macroeconomic Landscape | 1 | 6 | 0 | 0 | Solomon provides a masterclass on macro dynamics, framing current conditions as a sweet spot fueled by fiscal stimulus, rate cuts, deregulation, and massive corporate AI capex pulling forward productivity gains. | |
| Market Activity Expectations: M&A, IPOs, and Regulatory Dynamics | 2 | 5 | 2 | 0 | Solomon predicts a historic year for M&A and IPOs as confidence returns. Ben offers slight contrarian nuance regarding FTC resistance to tech M&A and explains how AI breaks the traditional 'mythical man month' rule. | |
| Tech Policy, Crypto Regulation, and AI Governance | 2 | 6 | 4 | 0 | Ben aggressively criticizes regulatory overreach, describing government debanking of crypto firms and warning against regulating AI mathematical models rather than illegal applications. | |
| Deploying AI within Goldman Sachs: The OneGS 3.0 Initiative | 3 | 5 | 1 | 0 | Justin references his own tenure at Goldman and the OneGS initiative. Solomon details enterprise AI execution, regulatory approval hurdles, and the OneGS 3.0 strategy to automate six core processes to free up capital. | |
| AI Integration at a16z and the Limits of Agentic Investing | 1 | 5 | 2 | 0 | Ben describes a16z's internal Databricks data lake. Solomon interjects to highlight the structural limitations of agentic AI investing, noting that market-beating returns require reacting to novel events absent from training data. | |
| Legal Disclaimers and End Screen | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Lighthearted closing banter where Solomon picks John Summit and Ben chooses DJ Jazzy Jeff before wrapping up. |
Statements from this episode (17)
Solomon: Current market setup for financial assets is best in decades
“If you're in our kind of businesses, if you're attached to financial assets, this is as sweet a spot that I've seen.”
Horowitz: Proprietary data plus sufficient GPUs can solve almost any problem
“With AI, if you have proprietary data and you have enough GPUs, you can solve, like, almost any problem.”
Horowitz: Goldman and Sachs families severed ties over World War I
“Also, Goldman stopped speaking to Sachs, like, forever. Like, they got very mad at each other over, it was at Sachs who supported Germany in World War I, so.”
Solomon: Goldman Sachs would resemble Lazard without 1999 IPO
“If the firm hadn't gone public in 1999, it would have missed kind of the global expansion of capital markets and probably would look more like, not to pick on anybody, but just to pick any more like Wazard. Today than like Goldman Sachs.”
Solomon: No non-US bank can match top six US banks in global relevance
“I would argue that the six most important financial The global institutions in the US are all US financial institutions, and there is no global institution that can compete in terms of its relevance in the world with the six most important US institutions.”
Solomon: Goldman Sachs balance sheet must reach $3.5T when JPMorgan hits $6T
“At the moment, JP Morgan has a four and a half trillion dollar balance sheet. When JP Morgan's six, we're gonna have to be at least three and a half. You know, at least three and a half.”
Solomon: Goldman Sachs holds $500B in total deposits, funding 40% of firm
“We've got, you participated in this, a very excellent digital deposit platform that now has, you know, over two hundred billion dollars of deposits, and we've also, we have about five hundred billion dollars of total deposits. 15 years ago, we had zero. So we …”
Horowitz: Best time to raise money is when nobody has capital
“And it turns out that the best time to raise money is when nobody has money.”
Horowitz: a16z captured 18.3% of all US venture capital in 2025
“And so this last year, 25, about 18 point, what is it, 18.3% of all venture capital raised in the U.S. Was raised by us.”
Solomon: Federal Reserve will likely execute only a couple more rate cuts
“That doesn't mean I think we're going to see many more rate cuts, but we're probably going to see a couple more.”
Solomon: Top four tech spenders drove 1% of GDP growth via $400B capex
“Last year, the four largest companies contributed one percent to GDP growth with their four hundred billion dollars of spending.”
Horowitz: Tech M&A will shift toward IP transactions over traditional acquisitions
“I think M&A will happen, but it may happen more in the form of IP transactions and that kind of thing than as traditional M&A.”
Horowitz: AI breaks software history because capital and GPUs can buy product leads
“With AI, if you have data, you know, particularly proprietary data, and you have enough GPUs, you can solve, like, almost any problem. It is magic. But it means that you can throw money at the problem. And we've never had that in tech.”
Horowitz: Restricting AI math modeling will forfeit US AI lead to China
“If you ban the technology, which some people are calling for, ah, or ban or kind of infringe people's ability to do mathematics, which is something that a lot of people are calling for then I think we're definitely gonna lose the AI rise to China, which has, l…”
Horowitz: Patchwork of 50 state AI laws will cripple startup innovation
“Every state wants to have their own set of AI laws, which will basically make it impossible for new companies to innovate, because you can't comply with 50 different laws from 50 different states, so we're trying to get that done.”
Horowitz: Copyright restrictions on training data will weaken US AI against China
“China absolutely doesn't respect copyrights, even, they don't respect just copying it let alone building a statistical model, and we're gonna have kind of a weaker AI if we can't train on all the data, can't train on the complete data.”