Perault: Proposed AI regulations would have entrenched market incumbents and stifled startups
Matt Perault · The Little Tech Agenda for AI · Sep 8, 2025 · at 24:08
Matt Perault is Head of AI Policy at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). He discusses the impact of proposed federal AI regulatory frameworks on tech startups.
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“Many of the politicians who are put, were pushing concepts that would have really put a stranglehold, I think, on AI startups and would have led to more monopolization of a market that already tends toward monopoly because of the high barriers to entry already.”
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Perault: Regulate AI applications and use, not underlying model development
“Regulate use. Do not regulate development.”
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“There were ideas being proposed by not just the government, but industry to require a license. To build frontier AI tools and for it to be regulated like nuclear energy.”
Perault: Proposed AI regulations burden startups without actually protecting consumers
“Licensing, nuclear style regulation like flops, threshold based disclosures, really complicated transparency regimes, impact assessments, audits, which are a bunch of ideas that we think are not going to help protect people and are going to make it really hard…”
Perault: Economic evidence shows market licensing regimes typically suppress competition
“I don't think there's much economic evidence that licensing is pro-competitive. It typically is the opposite.”