a16z Growth State of Markets September 2026 is a 90-page investor-grade market review covering the tech-driven equity cycle, the multi-trillion-dollar AI capex buildout, the rotation from software (bits) to hardware and infrastructure (atoms), the so-called SaaSpocalypse, private-market value creation, the post-ZIRP startup landscape, and the macro signals now coming from private company data. Every page pairs a bold editorial headline with sourced charts from S&P Capital IQ, Bloomberg, JPMAM, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, PitchBook, Carta, OpenRouter, Stripe and a16z portfolio companies.
Navigazione Rapida
Tag
Condividi le slide
a16z Growth State of Markets September 2026 is a 90-page investor-grade market review covering the tech-driven equity cycle, the multi-trillion-dollar AI capex buildout, the rotation from software (bits) to hardware and infrastructure (atoms), the so-called SaaSpocalypse, private-market value creation, the post-ZIRP startup landscape, and the macro signals now coming from private company data. Every page pairs a bold editorial headline with sourced charts from S&P Capital IQ, Bloomberg, JPMAM, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, PitchBook, Carta, OpenRouter, Stripe and a16z portfolio companies.
Vista dettagliata di ogni pagina di slide, inclusi layout, contenuto chiave ed elementi visivi.
Cover slide with the a16z Growth wordmark, the title State of Markets in metallic serif capitals and the date September 2026 over a moody teal cityscape.
Full-bleed dark teal background image with centered logo, title and subtitle stack
Legal disclaimer stating the deck is informational only, not investment advice, with notes on third-party data and the tech-universe methodology.
Centered title with two justified paragraphs on a cream background and a faint seal watermark
Eight numbered sections: Tech Is The Everything Cycle, AI Is A Generational Platform Shift, Capex Is Working, Atoms Are So Back, SaaSpocalypse? More Like SaaS-Prove-It, Take a Walk On The Private Side, It's A Brave New World For Startups Too, PrivateCos Telling The Macro Story.
Dark green header band with title, numbered list of eight section names below on cream
Section divider for part one.
Full-bleed dark city-and-bridge photo with large serif section title at left
Thesis narrative that tech has left the cottage and is now the prime mover of the economy, paired with a chart showing tech is now 55% of all U.S. capital spending.
Dark green left sidebar with title and three paragraphs, large chart card on the right
Two stacked bar charts showing tech is roughly 35% of the Global 100 by count and roughly 60% by market cap, rising steadily since 2010.
Headline across the top, two equal chart cards side by side
Three charts: tech is nearly half of S&P 500 profits, tech earnings have grown about 3.8x more than non-tech, and tech contributed about 76% of earnings growth.
Headline and subtitle, three chart cards in a row
Three charts showing S&P 500 margins at historic highs near 17.5%, margin expansion for tech and non-tech, and tech profit margins far above the rest.
Headline and subtitle, three chart cards in a row
Tech and energy lead EPS growth but growth is broad-based, with a record 93.6% of S&P 500 companies meeting or beating estimates.
Headline and subtitle, two chart cards side by side
Earnings per share surge while P/E multiples compress, and tech profits grow 71% year over year off an already high base.
Headline and two-line subtitle, two chart cards, green takeaway line at bottom
Table decomposing year-to-date sector returns into EPS growth and multiple change, plus a bar chart showing tech P/E roughly 20% below its five-year average.
Headline and subtitle, table card on the left and bar chart card on the right
Rest of tech, not the Mag 7, has carried the year as hyperscalers pour profits into the AI buildout.
Dark green left sidebar with narrative, large indexed performance chart on the right
Momentum factor swings and leveraged ETF assets reaching $192B show retail piling into consensus themes.
Headline and subtitle, two chart cards side by side
Section divider for part two.
Full-bleed dark city photo with large serif section title at left
Hyperscaler capex approaching $800B in 2026 and over $1T annually from 2027, and every compute cycle is bigger than the last.
Headline, two chart cards side by side
Capex is near the peaks of past cycles as a share of GDP, and hyperscaler capex estimates keep being revised upward every year.
Headline and subtitle, two chart cards side by side
Hyperscaler capex rising to about $1.18T by 2028 while free cash flow as a share of sales drops sharply before recovering.
Headline and subtitle, single wide chart card centered
Hyperscaler and Nvidia investment-grade debt issuance spikes above $300B in 2026, and AI borrowing is adding long-duration supply to the market.
Headline and subtitle, two chart cards side by side
Hyperscaler ROIC near 20% remains well above cost of debt and WACC, which is why lenders are comfortable.
Dark green left sidebar with narrative, single chart card on the right
Data centers have driven a surge in construction and skilled-trades hiring and pay a large premium on wages for the same job titles.
Headline and subtitle at left with a chart card below, tall dumbbell chart card on the right
Scatter plot shows the largest price increases came with the largest demand decreases, with a research quote estimating rates fell 6% where capacity grew 160%.
Headline and subtitle, scatter chart card on the left and large pull-quote card on the right
Section divider for part three.
Full-bleed warm-toned night city photo with serif title and italic subtitle
OpenAI and Anthropic ARR ramping toward $150B, and labs added more revenue in 2026 than all public software combined.
Headline and subtitle, two chart cards side by side
Cloud revenue backlogs have doubled year over year, and consensus expects hyperscaler free cash flow to come roaring back by 2030.
Headline and subtitle, two chart cards side by side
CoreWeave and other neoclouds are scaling quarterly revenue faster than AWS, Azure and GCS did at the same stage.
Headline, two chart cards side by side
GPU rental prices and residual values are climbing or holding steady even for older chips, undermining the depreciation bear case.
Dark green left sidebar with narrative, single chart card on the right
Companies reporting quantifiable AI impact are rising, yet 69% of the S&P 500 cite a live deployment while only 2% disclose a tracked metric.
Headline and subtitle, two chart cards side by side
Grid of ten earnings-call quotes on AI ROI from Amazon, Meta, Shopify, ServiceNow, Affirm, Lemonade, Chime, Snowflake, Microsoft and Walmart.
Headline, two rows of five logo cards each with a category label, quote and citation
Only 20% of organizations cite cost as a constraint, most sectors plan to increase AI spend, and cloud reached only 4% of IT budgets in year two.
Dark green left sidebar with narrative, 2x2 grid of chart cards on the right
Gen Z business applications surge and GitHub shows an explosion of merged pull requests, commits and new repos.
Headline and subtitle, two chart cards side by side
High-intensity AI adopters increase entry-level headcount share, and AI-related white-collar hiring in the U.S. is running above trend.
Headline, two chart cards side by side
Adoption is wide but shallow; a tiny share of power users drive growth, and AI natives generate far more revenue at the tail.
Wide dark green left panel with five narrative paragraphs, single chart card on the right
The top 1% of AI spenders outspend the top 10% by roughly 8x, and frontier firms' token output has pulled far ahead of typical firms across industries.
Narrow dark green left panel with title and subtitle, two chart cards on the right with multiple small multiples
The price of intelligence has fallen as much in three years as PCs did in fifteen, while H100 rental prices rise even as token prices fall.
Headline, two chart cards side by side
Agents now consume 7.3 trillion tokens on OpenRouter, far more than humans, and over 85% of agentic token burn comes from cached prompts.
Narrow dark green left panel with title and subtitle, two chart cards on the right
Open models are growing quickly but remain a tiny slice of spend, while frontier labs capture about 70% of spend on 35% of tokens.
Headline, two text columns at top, two chart cards below
Price per token is falling and older models keep share, yet GPU rental prices keep rising even for older accelerators.
Dark green left sidebar with narrative, two small chart cards on top and one wide chart card below
Households paying for AI and their monthly spend keep rising, retention curves smile, and paid consumer subscriptions are up roughly 5x since 2025.
Dark green left panel with title, 2x2 grid of chart cards on the right
Search referral traffic is declining while AI referrals remain tiny compared with direct, paid and social channels.
Headline, single centered chart card
Meta's Muse app rapidly captured a share of U.S. downloads against ChatGPT, Instagram, Threads and Claude in mid-September.
Headline, single centered chart card
In the mobile internet cycle semiconductors led, then infrastructure, then software; the AI cycle is repeating the pattern.
Headline, two chart cards side by side
Section divider for part four, noting AI has led to a broader rotation from bits to atoms.
Full-bleed dark city photo with serif title and subtitle
Hardware has taken center stage as hyperscaler free cash flow effectively becomes semiconductor free cash flow, with EVs, grid, defense, rockets and robots adding to the atoms cycle.
Wide dark green left panel with four paragraphs, single chart card on the right
U.S. investment was a software story until hardware and data center spending recently turned up, and a Sankey diagram traces $100 of AI capex across the supply chain.
Headline at top left with chart card below, tall Sankey chart card on the right
Roughly $90T of global infrastructure investment is needed by 2040, with U.S. funding gaps in water, roads, power and transit.
Headline and subtitle, single wide chart card with two panels
U.S. manufacturing PMI, new orders and production are back in expansion, and output in semiconductors and electrical equipment is running ahead of capacity.
Headline, two chart cards each with small-multiple panels
Electricity demand growth comes from EVs, buildings and industry as much as data centers, and utility capex is set to exceed $1T by 2030.
Headline, two chart cards side by side
Launch costs have fallen to about $3,868 per kg while payload mass soars, and commercial operators now own most launched objects.
Headline, two chart cards side by side
Annual robot sales forecasts rise sharply, humanoids need the most actuators per unit, and earnings calls show a new automation wave.
Dark green left sidebar with narrative, two small chart cards on top and a wide chart card below
Waymo reached half a million weekly rides with a timeline of city launches, and robotaxi weekly active users are climbing.
Headline, two chart cards side by side
Global defense budgets as a share of GDP are rising again, and U.S. defense new orders and shipments are on the march.
Headline at top left with chart card below, tall two-panel chart card on the right
After a decade of capital-light dominance, asset-heavy businesses are outperforming asset-light, with the AI supply chain as the winning trade.
Dark green left sidebar with narrative, single chart card on the right
Semis and storage have nearly doubled year to date, and NAND and DRAM memory prices have spiked to multi-year highs.
Headline and subtitle at left with chart card below, tall two-panel chart card on the right
Chipmaker forward multiples sit well below what their expected earnings growth would predict, suggesting the cycle may not be like past ones.
Headline, two text columns with an embedded chart on the left and a bubble chart card on the right
GPUs arrive on time but substrates, HBM, DRAM, optics, transformers and gas turbines all have unusually long lead times.
Dark green left sidebar with narrative, single lead-time matrix card on the right
Section divider for part five, subtitled Software's Selective Selloff as SaaS enters a prove-it era.
Full-bleed dark city photo with serif title and two-line subtitle
SaaS has re-rated to reflect a shift from growth to profitability, but fundamentals remain stronger than returns suggest.
Wide dark green left panel with six paragraphs, single chart card on the right
Cyber and observability is the runaway software winner year to date and commands the premium multiple versus vertical and horizontal SaaS.
Headline at top left with chart card below, tall 2x2 scatter card on the right
Median EV to revenue has compressed across segments, with horizontal software at 2.7x, while high-growth multiples have normalized rather than collapsed.
Headline, two chart cards side by side
Software revenue growth has slowed but stabilized across percentiles, and operating leverage measures are stable or improving.
Headline, two chart cards side by side with small multiples
High-growth SaaS has become rare while high-margin SaaS is common; about 75% of software is profitable but only about 30% grows 20% plus.
Headline and subtitle, single wide chart card with two stacked area panels
Historical analogue showing newspaper stocks sold off five years before consensus earnings collapsed.
Headline, single centered chart card
Capital-light businesses carry great ROE expectations near 25% versus capital-intensive ones in the mid-teens.
Headline, single centered chart card
Section divider for part six.
Full-bleed warm-toned night city photo with two-line serif title
VC-backed exit value hit a new high watermark of $2,188B in 2026 year to date versus modest venture capital raised.
Headline, single centered chart card with two bar panels
$3-4T of value is accruing on the private side, and the five largest private companies are worth more than the past decade of tech IPOs combined.
Headline and subtitle, two chart cards side by side
Value accrues to private markets as time to IPO lengthens, and active U.S. unicorns at $5.34T have lapped the Russell 2000.
Headline, two chart cards side by side
The top 1% of exits account for 84% of exit value and the top 10% for 94% in the first half of 2026.
Headline, single wide chart card
Tender subscription rates are at highs, tender discounts are rare and small, and secondary trades show no discounts to last round.
Narrow dark green left panel with title and subtitle, three chart cards on the right
Top 30 VC portfolios have appreciated far more than the top 10 public companies, and venture NAV is concentrated at a crowded top.
Headline, two chart cards side by side
VC IRR dispersion by vintage has never been wider, and a table of net IRR, TVPI and DPI by percentile shows it pays to be top decile.
Headline, box-plot chart card on the left and data table card on the right
Section divider for part seven.
Full-bleed dark city photo with two-line serif title
Startups traded growth for profitability after ZIRP, but those that recently raised still grow at or above peak-ZIRP pace.
Dark green left sidebar with narrative, single chart card on the right
AI-related deals now capture 86% of U.S. VC deal value in 2026, with concentration masking a mix-shift into services and capital-intensive verticals.
Dark green left sidebar with title, subtitle and narrative, single chart card on the right
New unicorns are getting younger with a 37% decline in median age, and most unicorns are profitable but growing 20% or less.
Headline and subtitle, two chart cards side by side
Post-AI startup vintages are on a roughly 3x steeper revenue curve, and top AI apps grow about 5x off a small base and 2.5x off a larger base.
Headline, two chart cards side by side
Section divider for part eight, noting private techcos increasingly generate the leading signal on key economic questions.
Full-bleed dark city photo with two-line serif title and explanatory paragraph
Weekly tokens on OpenRouter reached 126.2T in September 2026, about 27x year over year and doubling roughly monthly.
Black left panel with OpenRouter logo, gold title and subtitle, single chart card on the right
OpenAI data shows 95% of power users adopt plugins and 93% adopt skills versus 21% and 19% at frontier firms and single digits at typical firms.
Black left panel with OpenAI logo, gold title and subtitle, single chart card on the right
Databricks Smart Router solves 92.3% of coding tasks at $2.13 per task, 35% cheaper and 1.3 points better than the best single model.
Black left panel with Databricks logo, gold title and subtitle, single chart card on the right
Kalshi prediction markets price the forward cost of Nvidia B200 compute per hour, making compute price a tradable KPI.
Black left panel with Kalshi logo, gold title and subtitle, single chart card on the right
Private inference providers added about three quarters of the revenue of Snowflake plus Datadog in 2026 at about one fifth of the equity value.
Black left panel with four logos, gold title and subtitle, single chart card on the right
Stripe payment data shows SaaS revenue growth accelerated into 2026 for both mature and young companies, contradicting the SaaSpocalypse narrative.
Black left panel with Stripe logo, gold title and subtitle, single chart card on the right with two line panels
Protege data shows in-system mortality per 100k patients falling faster in health systems adopting ambient AI fastest.
Black left panel with Protege logo, gold title and subtitle, single chart card on the right
EliseAI voice localization lifted tour conversions 5.28% and caller engagement 7.8%, with a quote describing the ElevenLabs and Cartesia collaboration.
Black left panel with EliseAI logo, gold title and narrative, bar chart card and italic quote card stacked on the right
Infographic shows how many new-entrant munitions one legacy round buys, from 3x to 8x cheaper alternatives.
Black left panel with three logos, gold title and subtitle, single infographic card on the right
Flock license plate readers reduced motor vehicle theft, shortened recovery times and increased arrest clearance rates.
Black left panel with Flock logo, gold title and subtitle, single chart card on the right
Pokemon card prices beat technology stocks, and Pokemon sales rise alongside Whatnot weekly active users as live auctions take flight.
Black left panel with Whatnot logo over a collectibles photo, gold title and subtitle, single chart card with two line panels
Seven forward-looking opportunity areas: Heavy-use consumer, Robotics, Autonomy, AI x Bio, Personal Health, Diffusion into the Enterprise beyond Coding, and a New era of American Dynamism.
Dark city background with gold centered headline and a 4-plus-3 grid of icon cards with gold rule accents
Closing slide featuring a bronze Art Deco medallion of a figure holding a glowing orb over a city skyline, with no text.
Full-bleed teal cityscape with a large centered bronze medallion
Domande comuni su questa slide e il contenuto della presentazione sottostante.
It is a 90-page market review from Andreessen Horowitz's growth team covering the tech-led equity cycle, the AI capex buildout, the rotation from software to hardware and infrastructure, the state of SaaS, private-market value creation, startup fundraising conditions, and macro signals from private company data.
Venture and growth investors, public equity analysts covering tech and AI, startup founders benchmarking growth and profitability, corporate strategy and IR teams, and students or journalists who want a sourced, chart-driven view of the 2026 market.
The deck pairs a cream background with dark green and black sidebars, serif editorial headlines, and white chart cards with source footnotes. The section divider, sidebar-plus-chart, two-chart, three-chart and logo case-study layouts are all easy to adapt for your own market or LP update.
No. It argues it is hard to call a bubble because earnings are growing off a high base while multiples have compressed, hyperscaler returns exceed their cost of borrowing, and demand for compute still exceeds supply. It does flag debt, concentration and retail leverage as risks to watch.
It reframes the software selloff as a prove-it era rather than an apocalypse. Cyber and observability outperformed, vertical SaaS held up better than horizontal, fundamentals and operating leverage stayed stable, and Stripe data shows SaaS revenue actually accelerated into 2026.
Charts cite S&P Capital IQ, Bloomberg, FactSet, JPMAM, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, BofA, PitchBook, Carta, Indeed, Ahrefs, SensorTower, OpenRouter, Stripe, Kalshi, and a16z portfolio companies such as Databricks, Protege, EliseAI, Anduril, Flock and Whatnot, with source lines on every chart.
The closing slide names seven untapped areas: heavy-use consumer AI, robotics, autonomy, AI x bio, personal health, diffusion of AI into the enterprise beyond coding, and a new era of American Dynamism including defense and manufacturing.
Yes. Use the section structure and chart-card layouts as a reference, then generate your own slides from your data or documents with 2Slides AI to match a similar editorial, chart-first style.
Create Your Own Slides
Turn your ideas into professional presentations in seconds with 2slides AI.
Fai riferimento a design professionali, scegli il tuo stile e genera slide con rendering del testo perfetto. Alimentato da Nano Banana—inizia a creare la tua presentazione ora.
Il Tuo Agente IA per le slide. Risparmia tempo, brilla più velocemente con la creazione intelligente di presentazioni.
© 2026 2slides. Tutti i diritti riservati.