      Andreessen Horowitz · 2026-03-10
      · 86d
    

a16z Invests $500M in Nexthop AI: The Networking Company for the AI Era

Andreessen Horowitz leads a $500 million Series B investment in Nexthop AI, a networking hardware and software company purpose-built for AI infrastructure. The company addresses a critical bottleneck in AI cluster performance by designing Ethernet switches optimized for AI traffic patterns rather than cloud traffic patterns. Nexthop combines hardware innovation with open-source software support under CEO Anshul Sadana, positioning itself as the defining networking company of the AI era.

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Metrics in this report

GPU Count per Cluster

thousandsGPU units

lower bound estimate

Modern AI training infrastructure

Series B Funding Amount

500$M

single round

Nexthop AI investment by a16z

Switch Bandwidth Progression

400G to 800G to 1.6Tbits/second

generation progression

AI-era networking hardware specifications

Switch Count per Cluster

thousandsphysical switches

lower bound estimate

Multi-layer network topology for AI clusters