
As 2025 comes to a close, consumer AI is entering a new phase.
A small number of products now dominate everyday use, multimodal models have unlocked entirely new creative workflows, and the big labs have pushed aggressively into consumer experiences.
At the same time, it is becoming clearer which ideas actually changed user behavior and which ones did not.
In this episode, a16z consumer investors Anish Acharya, Olivia Moore, Justine Moore, and Bryan Kim look back at the biggest product and model shifts of 2025 and then look ahead to what 2026 may bring.
They discuss why consumer AI appears to be trending toward winner-take-most, how subtle product design choices can matter more than raw model quality, and why templates, multimodality, and distribution are shaping the next wave of consumer products.
Where do startups still have room to win?
How will the role of the big labs continue to change?
And what will it actually take for consumer AI apps to break out at scale in 2026?
2025年,消费者AI领域经历了剧烈变化。OpenAI的ChatGPT凭借8-9亿周活跃用户遥遥领先,但谷歌Gemini通过Nano Banana等病毒式传播模型实现了155%的桌面用户增长。A16Z团队深入分析了这一年哪些策略奏效、哪些失败,并预测2026年可能是可扩展消费者AI应用爆发的关键时刻。
图像与视频领域的竞争:
被低估的创新:
界面设计的巨大差异:
模板的重要性:
当前尝试:
根本性挑战:
Claude(Anthropic):
Perplexity:
Meta与xAI(Grok):
被低估的趋势:
值得关注的产品:
战略方向:
2026年,随着模型质量达到可支持可扩展应用的水平,消费者AI开发者可能迎来真正的爆发时刻。成功的关键在于:找到实验室公司无法或不愿深入的有主见的垂直领域,设计降低使用门槛的产品体验,并聚焦于能为深度价值付费的高级用户群体。
As 2025 comes to a close, consumer AI is entering a new phase.
A small number of products now dominate everyday use, multimodal models have unlocked entirely new creative workflows, and the big labs have pushed aggressively into consumer experiences.
At the same time, it is becoming clearer which ideas actually changed user behavior and which ones did not.
In this episode, a16z consumer investors Anish Acharya, Olivia Moore, Justine Moore, and Bryan Kim look back at the biggest product and model shifts of 2025 and then look ahead to what 2026 may bring.
They discuss why consumer AI appears to be trending toward winner-take-most, how subtle product design choices can matter more than raw model quality, and why templates, multimodality, and distribution are shaping the next wave of consumer products.
Where do startups still have room to win?
How will the role of the big labs continue to change?
And what will it actually take for consumer AI apps to break out at scale in 2026?