a16z Partner Olivia Moore explains her cautious investment stance on horizontal consumer AI startups compared to vertical applications.
Opinion
Moore: Big AI labs struggle to build opinionated consumer products
“In my opinion, we've gone through dozens of things that they've launched or tried as new consumer products or new consumer interfaces like group chat, like Pulse, like Atlas, like Sora. Google has had a long tail, like Stitch, Gems, Opal, Doppel, Tons. Yeah. N…”
Opinion
Moore: Chinese Video AI Models Outperform US Competitors Due to Unrestricted Data
“The Chinese models are so good, because they can train on any data. So, Seedance II is probably the best example of this, where it's just kind of, in some ways, head and shoulders above what the US companies have thus far been able to do.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Moore: Voice AI outperforms humans in financial compliance adherence
“But it turns out this is an area where voice AI actually outperforms because humans are actually very good at violating compliance and regulations and voice AI can get it every time.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Moore: ChatGPT reaches 800M-900M weekly active users in late 2025
“If we had to call it now, ChatGPT is currently in the lead, by far, at 800 to nine hundred million weekly active users.”
Assertion Contradicted
Moore: Perplexity Comet browser launch traffic surpassed ChatGPT Atlas
“If you look at the data, like the spike at launch and the sustained traffic for Comet was actually much higher than for ChatGBT's own browser launch, Atlas, which is kind of crazy given how much more distribution ChatGBT has than Perplexity.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Moore: Top consumer AI startups reach 100%+ net revenue retention
“Which is why we're also seeing, like, consumer products for the first time ever have more than a hundred percent revenue retention.”