Big Ideas 2026: New Infrastructure Primitives
The a16z Show
2025/12/26
Big Ideas 2026: New Infrastructure Primitives
Big Ideas 2026: New Infrastructure Primitives

The a16z Show
2025/12/26
Emerging infrastructure primitives are reshaping how industries operate, not by improving existing systems, but by creating entirely new foundations for innovation. These shifts go beyond technology upgrades—they represent fundamental changes in how value is created, discovered, and distributed across ecosystems.
This podcast explores three transformative infrastructure primitives driving next-generation innovation. First, on-chain finance is evolving beyond stablecoins to enable programmable money through credit origination and synthetic assets, reducing costs and increasing interoperability via 'perpification' of traditional assets. Second, AI-powered autonomous labs are revolutionizing scientific research by combining reasoning models with robotics, accelerating discovery in fields like biotech and materials science. Interpretability remains key to trust and adoption. Third, distribution is becoming a built-in primitive, as AI-native startups leverage the 'Greenfield Strategy'—targeting newly formed companies to embed their tools early, avoiding legacy resistance. Inspired by Stripe’s growth model, this approach enables rapid scaling with minimal friction. Together, these primitives form compounding rails that support scalable, adaptive systems across finance, science, and enterprise tech.
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Stablecoins are just the beginning; on-chain credit origination is the next frontier.
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Fully self-driving science is a long-term goal, with current work laying the foundations.
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The Greenfield Strategy involves selling AI tools to startups at formation to win long-term distribution.