What tech does a16z recommend?

See what an elite VC fund suggests for a tech stack.

Author

Mark Delaney
February 21, 2025

The list of companies on a16z’s website can sometimes feel less like a list of their portfolio companies, and more like a “Who’s Who” of the tech world.

So when a VC fund like theirs publishes a list of tech to check out, it’s worth paying attention.

Some of these are still early and some are just for fun, but any of these could have value in building and growing a company.

So what do they recommend?

a16z Apps Unwrapped

General assistance

  1. Perplexity – AI-powered search engine and research assistant

  2. Claude (Anthropic) – general chatbot, great for projects and sharing work

  3. ChatGPT – you know this one, but check out Advanced Voice Mode to talk to AI

Get work done

  1. Granola – AI notetaker that listens to your meetings and formats the transcript into notes

  2. Wispr Flow – AI voice dictation that turns your speech into text in any app

  3. Gamma – make decks, docs, and websites to present your ideas with AI

  4. Adobe – summarize and chat with PDFs

  5. Cubby – AI workspace built for collaborative research

  6. Cora – AI email assistant that organizes your inbox and automates responses

  7. Lindy – build AI agents to automate your workflows

Build an audience

  1. Delphi – AI text, voice, and video clones to chat with your audience

  2. HeyGen – AI avatars to scale your content production or translate your videos

  3. Argil – AI avatars for social media videos

  4. Overlap, Opus – turn your long-form videos into short viral clips with AI

  5. Tutory – AI agent builder for creators

  6. Captions – AI avatars and video editing (e.g. auto-captions, correct eye contact)

Build a product

  1. Cursor – AI code editor that knows your codebase

  2. Replit – AI agents to make apps and sites from natural language

  3. Anychat – use any AI model in one place

  4. Codeium – AI-powered autocomplete for your code

Get creative

  1. Eleven Labs – realistic AI voices

  2. Suno, Udio – create songs/music from text prompts

  3. Midjourney, Ideogram, Playground – AI image generation

  4. Runway, Kling, Viggle – AI video generation

  5. Krea – AI creative canvas to make and enhance images and video

  6. Photoroom – AI image editor, great for product photos and visuals

Learn or grow

  1. Rosebud – interactive journal that uses AI to surface insights

  2. Good Inside – parenting co-pilot with personalized support

  3. Ada Health – get an AI-powered assessment of medical symptoms

  4. Ash – personalized AI counselor/coach

  5. NotebookLM – turn any document into an AI podcast

  6. Particle – AI news app that combines multiple articles into summarized stories

Have fun

  1. Remix – social app for creating and sharing AI images and video

  2. Meta Imagine – make AI images of yourself, family, and friends in Meta apps

  3. Grok – chatbot from xAI (use it here!)

  4. Curio – toys for kids to talk to, powered by AI voices

I hope you find something here that sparks some innovation, solves a current problem, or inspires building something competitive.

Go crush it.

Mark

P.S. No tool is going to solve all of your problems and no tool is perfect. Tools and tech serve a function and can be used for that, or something new and creative. Ultimately, the power is with you, which is both exhilarating and terrifying.

But don’t let that stop you.

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