Ashu Garg has backed companies like Databricks, Turing, Cohesity, Jasper, and Eightfold.ai as General Partner at Foundation Capital. Over the years, he’s seen multiple waves of innovation but in his words, nothing in the last 45 years comes close to the transformation AI is bringing right now.

Ashu discusses how the next wave of AI products will be driven by combining reasoning with reinforcement learning, and cautions every startup building on top of foundation models: that their vendors will also be their competitors.

He also talks about how agents are moving from simple copilots to autonomous workers, how the internet itself will have to be reinvented for an agentic world, and what happens when your agent can not only draft emails but also buy plane tickets or make payments on your behalf.

We also get into the realities of building AI companies today: why your competitor isn’t GPT-5 but GPT-7, where startups can actually outcompete big tech, whether geography still matters, and how relationships and access still shape outcomes in an age that feels completely digital.

This is one of the most insightful conversations you’ll hear on what it takes to build durable AI companies in this era and where the next generation of billion-dollar startups will come from.

0:00- Trailer
0:42 – Foundation models as biggest competitor of AI startups
4:19 – Agents are visible; reasoning is underneath
6:20 – The leap of AI from autonomous to automation
9:27 – Why the internet must be reinvented for AI
10:49 – What if agents act (and do payments) on your behalf? 
13:06 – Is Ashu using agents for himself?
13:54 – No tech shift in 45 years compares to today
15:38 – Who is accountable for what your agent does?
17:57 – Who has advantage: first-time or repeat founders?
19:27 – Does geography matter for founders anymore?
21:19 – Whose AI will become the user’s default?
25:44 – Where do startups have an edge in AI?
28:25 – How can startups outdo their model providers
31:21 – Does distribution still matter in the Agentic era?
33:29 – Why experience and access will always matter
35:36 – Startups today must compete with GPT-7, not GPT-5
37:09 – Why Dollars on talent poaching in AI makes sense
42:20 – Are only 1,000 people at AI’s cutting edge?
43:32 – What does Ashu garg look for in a founder?
45:15 – How to build more billion-dollar companies?

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This video is for informational purposes only. The views expressed are those of the individuals quoted and do not constitute professional advice.

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