chrislyons

I had an incredible conversation with the legendary @MagicJohnson on the @a16z podcast discussing his best deals, investing where no one else is looking, and building a sports empire. Grateful for the 10+ years of building together and learning from the 🐐 on and off the court. Give it a listen 🎙️

Mamba Mentality forever 🐍

I am thrilled to announce my return to a16z as a full-time General Partner. Having made a full recovery from cancer and navigated some of life’s most taxing personal hurdles, I am returning with a sharpened sense of purpose and a deep optimism for the future, both personally and professionally. My time away reinforced that living to one's fullest capacity requires doing what you love with the people you trust. While I’ve continued to support my boards and founders, I’ve realized my greatest impact happens when I am 'all in.' I believe he current pace of innovation in infrastructure is unmatched, and I couldn't be happier to be back in the trenches with my colleagues and close friends on the a16z Infra team.

Spotted in the NYC subway. “Zero screen time.” An iPod Shuffle ad in 2026. When we built the iPod, the goal was the technology disappeared and you could have your music wherever you were. 1,000 songs in your pocket. Now we’re living through a moment where people are actively looking for ways to disconnect from the infinite feed, algos, and constant notifications. That doesn’t mean technology is bad. It means the best technology understands when to step back. Not every problem needs another screen, another menu, or another layer of complexity. Constraints create freedom (read: @DavidEpstein new book Inside the Box). And often removing features creates a better product than adding them. The future of technology shouldn’t just be more engagement. It should help us be more human.

@rrhoover huge congrats man!

Announcing Weekend Fund IV, backed by operators and founders (and maybe you). When we raised Weekend Fund III, we did something different. Toward the end of our raise, we announced the fund in public and accepted applications from LPs. Our goal was to make early-stage venture more accessible and align ourselves with an army of operators and founders to help us and the startups we back. Over 1,000 people expressed interest to join and hundreds did, but there was a problem. Legally, only accredited investors could participate as an LP. Accreditation laws are well-meaning but limit access to the majority of consumers. With WF IV, @vedikaja_in and I are doing something different. Like before, we’re onboarding engineers, designers, researchers, data scientists, salespeople, and other domain experts as LPs in the fund. But this time at a larger scale with USVC. AngelList recently announced USVC, a new kind of fund that’s accessible to everyone, including the non-accredited. It holds positions in private late-stage companies like xAI, Anthropic, OpenAI, Sierra, and Vercel. I personally invested. Today, they just announced their investment in Weekend Fund IV, one of the first early-stage funds added to their portfolio. If you’re interested in being a part of Weekend Fund and getting exposure to generational startups mentioned above, visit usvc [dot] com. Of course, don’t invest what you can’t afford to lose. Investing in startups is risky and you may lose all your money. USVC shares are illiquid with no guarantee of repurchase. Consider investment objectives, risks, charges and expenses carefully before investing. Read the prospectus: usvc [dot] com/prospectus. Also, USVC is currently limited to US citizens. They’re working to open the fund to other geographies. Lastly, my DMs are open. :)

We’re excited to invest in Ethos. Ethos is building AI-powered infrastructure for human opportunity. Using AI voice agents, Ethos captures the knowledge, expertise, and nuance that traditional professional profiles miss. From there, it matches people to a wide range of opportunities across the economy: market research, expert calls, fractional roles, and full-time jobs. Top earners are already making more than $10,000 per month on Ethos. Cofounders James and Daniel are building on the premise that AI shouldn’t make you replaceable, but irreplaceable. Ethos will be the next great improvement in the NPS of employment by making work itself abundant. By @illscience, @jamdac, and @omooretweets

We've raised $2.2B in committed capital to invest in the next generation of crypto. Announcing Crypto Fund 5

It was fun spending time with the new generation . . .

💯

ok - dropping big dates/news for a16z speedrun: - starting TODAY, founders can apply for the 2026 program that runs July 27 to Oct 11 in SF here's the link: speedrun007.a16z.com/ac - we will be investing up to $1M and funding 70+ companies over the next few weeks - But there's also $5M in credits/tokens/etc from AWS/GCP/Open AI/Azure/NVIDIA/Deel/Stripe/etc. You'll also work with our amazing operating team (GTM, talent, brand, people, and more), and join our community of elite founders - we offer a Global Founders Program for international founders, to help with visas, banking support, relo recommendations - yes you can be solo (but better if you're further along, and have built a team). No you don't have to have an idea yet. Yes you have to know how to build (even if you're not technical) - Also, in other news: speedun is officially moving full-time to SF. (prev it alternated SF/LA) this is for all the obv reasons - we've continued to have an insane lineup of speakers, including the founders of Carta / DoorDash / Twilio / Figma / Zynga / Airtable / Twitch / and of course, lunch/dinners with Marc/Ben alongside a16z team - and much more - the deadline for applying is May 17!

Here we go…@MTSlive

@mfigge 🫡

A few weeks ago I stepped up and became CEO at Yuga. I joined BAYC in June 2021. Anyone who was around back then will never forget that ride: Doggo airdrop, mutant mint, casino night, and the first Apefest - it was a slingshot out of the pandemic and into a new frontier. Over the past year I’ve been sharpening the focus on Otherside. As CEO, my goal is to extend that discipline across all of Yuga. BAYC is the best club on the internet. The Club needs to be part of your world, not just your timeline. We’ll be doing way more stuff together as a club - meetups, moments, access, apparel. I see all of this guided by three pillars: IRL, Storytelling, and Style. While I’m handling operations, I’m excited that Garga will be freed up to be going deeper on the BAYC creative and world-building he’s always been best at. With Otherside, we’re developing a world class social platform for digital ownership and crypto. People will explore Otherdeeds, compete for resources, and build their own experiences. To win, we’re going to need to grow our user base a lot, and prove how every community can succeed in Otherside. We’ve made a lot of progress over the last few weeks and I’m stoked to show you, there’s a lot more ahead.

HARDEST IMAGE OF 2026

This genuinely has to be top 5 greatest set designs of all time time

@johncoogan @sama LFG! 🚀

TBPN has been acquired by OpenAI! The show is staying the same and we’ll continue to go live at 11am pacific every weekday. This is a full circle moment for me as I’ve worked with @sama for well over a decade. He funded my first company in 2013. Then helped us fix a serious logjam during a critical funding round a few years later. When I took my second company through YC, he was president at the time, and then when I joined Founders Fund, the first deal I saw in motion was the post-ChatGPT round in late 2022. And as we started growing TBPN last year, he was the very first lab lead to join the show. Thank you to everyone that has been a part of TBPN until now. The last year has been the most fun and rewarding part of my career and we’re excited to have more resources than ever going forward.