Raghu Raghuram: AI, Robotics, and the Rebirth of Infrastructure In this episode, a16z's newest General Partner Raghu Raghuram sits down with Ben Horowitz, Martin Casado, and David George to reflect on the early internet wars with Microsoft, how Netscape’s browser battles shaped a generation of founders, and the inside story of VMware’s 1.3B purchase of Nicira, which became one of the most successful tech acquisitions in history. They discuss how VMware scaled from tens of millions to over 13 billion in revenue, what it took to outlast the cloud revolution, and why AI is now triggering the biggest infrastructure reset since virtualization. Raghu shares his vision for the next decade, from data center robotics and energy-aware compute to how AI is reshaping both startups and giants alike. 00:00 Meeting Ben and Marc at Netscape 04:58 Good Product Manager/Bad Product Manager 09:42 Integrating Nicira and VMware’s teams 12:23 The 1.3B deal that returned billions 15:07 Scaling VMware from 40M to 13B 20:12 Joining a16z: rebuilding compute for the AI era 24:13 Robotics, data centers, and physical AI 26:07 The vertical future of robotics 28:11 Founders facing enterprise-scale problems on day one @RaghuRaghuram @bhorowitz @DavidGeorge83 @martin_casado(a16z)