Venture capital powerhouse Andreessen Horowitz has released its predictions for the AI landscape in 2026, with four partners debating the future of major consumer large language models (LLMs) on the firm’s podcast that aired December 29, 2025. The discussion centered on industry leaders including ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, Claude, Cursor, Perplexity, and Grok.
Gemini’s multimedia capabilities could be a game-changer, according to Justine Moore, an investment partner at the firm. She highlighted that Gemini 3’s advanced video and image models might give it a significant competitive advantage over ChatGPT, noting there’s “always nearly infinite demand” for these capabilities among both professional and everyday users. Moore emphasized that viral trends often emerge from new capabilities in best-in-class image and video models, which can drive substantial user adoption and potentially help Gemini overcome ChatGPT’s dominant name recognition.
Multimodality emerged as a critical differentiator for 2026. Moore explained that the ability for AI models to simultaneously process text, images, and audio represents the next frontier. She posed compelling questions about future capabilities: “What happens when you can put a video in and get images out that are related to or the next iteration of the video? Or you can put a video in and a text prompt about what you want to edit, and get the edited video out?” These advances could revolutionize the design world, where combining text and images creatively is essential.
ChatGPT’s app ecosystem could define its trajectory, according to partner Olivia Moore, who called the success of ChatGPT’s internal app store the “defining question for the next year.” Launch partners included major platforms like Spotify and Zillow. Anish Acharya, another partner, emphasized that the software development kit (SDK) allowing developers to build custom apps for ChatGPT could prove crucial for both consumer and enterprise adoption.
The market dynamics suggest a “winner takes all” scenario is emerging. ChatGPT currently dominates with 800-900 million weekly active users, while Google’s Gemini has reached approximately 35% of that scale on web and 40% on mobile. Other models trail at 8-10% market share. However, ChatGPT Enterprise showed explosive growth with an eightfold increase in weekly messages during 2025, according to OpenAI. The partners noted that mandatory workplace adoption could significantly boost consumer usage, though Gemini is growing desktop users faster than ChatGPT, indicating the competitive landscape remains fluid.
Key Quotes
So many new viral trends are created around new capabilities of the best-in-class image and video models
Justine Moore, investment partner at Andreessen Horowitz, explained how Gemini’s video and image capabilities could drive user adoption and help overcome ChatGPT’s name recognition advantage through viral content creation.
What happens when you can put a video in and get images out that are related to or the next iteration of the video? Or you can put a video in and a text prompt about what you want to edit, and get the edited video out?
Moore described the transformative potential of multimodal AI capabilities, highlighting how the convergence of different media types could revolutionize creative workflows and design processes in 2026.
You have to be creative around, what is the angle that you can go steal people away from?
Partner Bryan Kim advised AI startups to avoid competing directly with dominant text-based models and instead find innovative angles to differentiate themselves in an increasingly crowded market.
If we’re entering a world now where people have to use ChatGPT for their company or as part of their work, that could really translate into consumer usage
Olivia Moore highlighted how ChatGPT Enterprise’s eightfold growth in weekly messages during 2025 could create a flywheel effect, with mandatory workplace adoption driving increased consumer adoption and further cementing ChatGPT’s market dominance.
Our Take
Andreessen Horowitz’s predictions reveal a critical inflection point in the AI industry. The shift from text-only to multimodal capabilities represents more than incremental improvement—it’s a fundamental reimagining of human-AI interaction. What’s particularly striking is the firm’s acknowledgment of how quickly market dynamics are changing, with Gemini gaining ground despite ChatGPT’s massive lead. The “winner takes all” thesis is compelling but potentially premature; we’ve seen tech markets fragment before, and specialized models like Claude serving technical users suggest room for multiple winners. The enterprise angle is especially significant—ChatGPT’s eightfold message growth in enterprise settings could create the kind of lock-in effect that defined Microsoft Office’s dominance. However, the partners may be underestimating the potential for open-source models and regional competitors to disrupt this narrative. The emphasis on app ecosystems echoes the smartphone platform wars, suggesting 2026 could determine which AI platform becomes the “iOS or Android” of artificial intelligence.
Why This Matters
This analysis from one of Silicon Valley’s most influential venture capital firms provides crucial insights into the rapidly evolving AI industry’s competitive dynamics. The predictions highlight how the AI race is shifting from pure text-based capabilities to multimedia and multimodal experiences, which will fundamentally change how consumers and businesses interact with artificial intelligence. The potential “winner takes all” scenario has massive implications for the tech industry, as dominant platforms could lock in users and create powerful network effects. For businesses, the rise of enterprise AI tools like ChatGPT Enterprise signals a transformation in workplace productivity, with AI assistants becoming mandatory rather than optional. The emphasis on app ecosystems and developer tools suggests we’re entering a new phase where AI platforms become operating systems for a new generation of applications. For startups, the message is clear: innovation must focus on specialized capabilities and creative angles rather than competing directly with established text-based models. The rapid pace of change, with market positions shifting monthly, means 2026 could see dramatic reshuffling of AI market leadership, making this a pivotal year for determining which companies will dominate the next decade of artificial intelligence.
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