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Andreessen Horowitz’s Anjney Midha argues that the US has no choice in terms of how it approaches the artificial intelligence race with China: “We must win.”
Speaking with Semafor’s Reed Albergotti at Semafor’s World Economy Summit on Wednesday, Midha, who is a general partner at the Silicon Valley venture capital firm, said that US AI companies should double down on driving growth rather than stifle innovation over concerns of potentially harmful use cases. People all over the world will choose to use American AI tools, so long as they’re the best available.
“This is why a billion people in India still use WhatsApp. It was invented in Silicon Valley,” Midha said.
The US needs to lead in the global AI race, not only because the technology is transformative, but also because it is influenced by — and has the power to influence — cultural norms, the tech investor added.
“Every country is going to want to run their own sovereign infrastructure so they control their AI,” he said.
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Earlier this year DeepSeek, a generative AI app from a Chinese company, became a surprise hit after it was found to be competitive with far larger, more expensive US models, despite apparently having far fewer resources and compute power. Andreessen Horowitz boss Marc Andreessen called it America’s “Sputnik moment.” Midha said its success should encourage US tech companies to pick up the development pace rather than slow down out of caution.
“The message was loud and clear, right? If you guys in the West are going to slow yourself, go for it, but we sure as hell aren’t slowing ourselves down,” he said of China’s AI developers.
The Semafor View
CEOS need to be fluent in emerging technologies, but artificial intelligence will become as ubiquitous as did mobile and digital. But as AI becomes embedded in organizations, CEOs will need a more nimble approach to project management.