The highest-stakes game of corporate chess ever played
Gavin Baker (Atreides Management) with David George (a16z), recorded for “Why AI Demand Is Outrunning Compute Supply.” The industry plays White. The bear case plays Black, and for most of the 74 minutes it struggles to find a move.
[Event "The a16z Show"]
[Date "2026.08.31"]
[White "The AI build-out"]
[Black "The bear case"]
[Annotators "G. Baker, D. George"]
[Opening "The And Gambit"]
[TimeControl "74:26"]
[Clip "a16z on X, 2026.10.13, 0:48"]
[Result "*"]
How to read this board
Start with the clip. The four quotes below are the 48-second a16z cut. In the full game they are move 19.
Explore the board. White is the AI build-out, Black is the bear case. Tap a piece to see who it is and why it stands there. Use Next move to step through the talk; gold squares show which pieces each topic touches.
Read the game score. 25 moves in the order discussed. Each timestamp opens YouTube at that second. !! brilliant · ! good · !? interesting · ?! dubious · ? mistake
The chess marks are this page’s reading, not the speakers’ ratings. Speakers are named only where the transcript makes it clear, and figures are as stated on the show.
“You’ve got to give Meta a lot of credit. They were out of the game, and they got back in the game.”Gavin Baker · move 19
“Who could have imagined a year ago, when Gemini was ascendant, that Gemini wouldn’t even be in the conversation.”Gavin Baker · move 19
“Some people have made bad moves, they’ve made good moves. You’ve seen some people come out of the game, others come back in.”Gavin Baker · move 19
“I don’t know if we’re going to call it multi-model, a hybrid model … but I think that’s the future.”Gavin Baker · move 19
The position after 74 minutes
Who stands where
Tap a piece for its role · step through the game to see which squares each move touches
B+−
Off the boardMicrosoft’s in-house frontier modelCursor, now part of SpaceX/xAIPoolside’s open-source talentGemini’s 2025 lead
Annotated game score · timestamps link to YouTube
The moves, in order
!! brilliant! good!? interesting?! dubious? mistake= book move
Material count
The numbers on the clock
Figures as stated in the conversation, not independently checked