Name: Ben Horowitz and David Solomon: The Sweetest Macro Spot in 40 Years
Uploaded: 2026-02-02T18:00:00+00:00
Duration: 2135 s

Speakers

David Solomon — Chairman and CEO, Goldman Sachs

Ben Horowitz — Co-Founder, Andreessen Horowitz (a16z)

Summary

David Haber interviews Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon and a16z cofounder Ben Horowitz about the macro environment, enterprise AI adoption, and crypto and AI policy. Solomon calls the current U.S. backdrop the sweetest macro spot of his 40-year career, citing fiscal and monetary stimulus, a capital-investment supercycle, and deregulation. Horowitz discusses a16z's scale, crypto and AI policy priorities, and why AI changes startup moats and capital needs. Both see AI and policy clarity as major forces shaping markets.

Solomon describes a powerful U.S. stimulus cocktail and a prime environment for financial assets, growth, and technology.
He predicts the biggest M&A year in history and a bigger IPO year as confidence returns.
Goldman is focused on scale and stable deposit funding, with AI efficiency efforts like One GS 3.0.
Horowitz says crypto is a major technology and points to stablecoin and market-structure legislation as key catalysts.
Horowitz argues AI policy should regulate applications, not math, to avoid losing leadership to China.
He says AI weakens traditional leads because proprietary data and GPUs let capital solve problems, driving compute and capital needs.
a16z now captures about 18.3% of U.S. venture capital raised, according to Horowitz.
The conversation also touches on AI agents in investing and DJ preferences.

Ideas

David Solomon Chairman and CEO, Goldman Sachs 7:24

Goldman scale and funding improve resilience

Solomon frames scale and stable funding as two key strategic risks for Goldman. It is one of the two smallest of the six most important U.S. financial institutions, and he argues scale provides leverage and latitude in turbulence. Goldman has built about $500B of deposits from zero, now funding roughly 40% of the firm with more stable deposits rather than wholesale funding; One GS 3.0 aims to free up efficiency to reinvest. This improves resilience, but he does not frame it as an explicit stock trade.

David Solomon Chairman and CEO, Goldman Sachs 16:00

Sweetest macro spot favors growth tech

Solomon says the U.S. macro is in the sweetest spot he has seen in 40 years: ongoing fiscal stimulus, a rate-cutting monetary cycle, an unprecedented capital-investment supercycle, and deregulation together create a powerful stimulative cocktail that makes the economy hard to slow. Although inflation and geopolitics are risks, he says owners of financial or investable assets, especially around growth and technology, are in a prime environment.

David Solomon Chairman and CEO, Goldman Sachs 19:43

Record M&A and IPO year ahead

Solomon says M&A, capital raising, and IPOs are confidence-driven, and the environment has shifted from a clear no to maybe under a less hostile regulatory backdrop. CEOs want to do large deals, so he expects this to be the biggest M&A year in history and a bigger IPO year, with large companies finally coming to market. This should benefit investment banks that advise on and finance those transactions.

Ben Horowitz Co-Founder, Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) 22:45

AI compute demand and capital needs rise

Horowitz says AI changes technology moats: with proprietary data and enough GPUs, companies can solve almost any problem by throwing capital at it, so leads are less durable than in classic software. That increases AI compute and capital needs, helps explain why startups can scale from zero to $100M or $1B in under a year, and should drive more IPOs as AI companies raise capital to compete.

Ben Horowitz Co-Founder, Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) 25:59

Don't regulate math; US AI wins

Horowitz argues AI is a general-purpose technology like electricity or the automobile, so overregulation is dangerous. He opposes regulating math itself, a patchwork of 50 state AI laws, and copyright rules that prevent training on complete data; policy should regulate harmful applications instead. Otherwise the U.S. risks losing AI leadership to China with century-scale consequences.

David Solomon Chairman and CEO, Goldman Sachs 28:51

Enterprise AI opportunity is huge but hard

Solomon says AI is making Goldman's people more productive, but the bigger opportunity is reimagining core enterprise processes. Goldman's One GS 3.0 program is targeting six processes to automate and create capacity; if it can find $2B of efficiency, it could spend $8B on technology without lowering returns. He calls the opportunity huge but hard to execute and says the market is pulling forward expected AI productivity gains.

Ben Horowitz and David Solomon: The Sweetest Macro Spot in 40 Years

Summary

Ideas

Up Next