Venture capital has a new scoreboard, and Andreessen Horowitz is sitting comfortably at the top of it.
The 2026 Strebulaev-Jackson AI Venture Ranking puts a16z in first place among US venture firms investing in artificial intelligence, with a score of 22,509 points. Second place is not especially close.
The leaderboard
The ranking comes from Stanford GSB professor Ilya Strebulaev and co-author Blake Jackson. It looks only at US-based AI investments, which makes it a narrower lens than the usual “who’s the best VC” debate.
Lightspeed Venture Partners took second with 14,422 points. Menlo Ventures landed third at 13,464 points.
Do the subtraction and a16z leads Lightspeed by 8,087 points. Lightspeed’s lead over Menlo, meanwhile, is just 958 points.
The AI ranking was published on Strebulaev’s Substack on October 17 and formally announced on X on October 20, 2026. It draws on data running through August 31, 2026.
How the scoring works
The model weighs the value created by a firm’s investments after adjusting for costs and influence. It also factors in investment dilution and the strategic role a firm played inside its portfolio companies.
The underlying dataset is large. The rankings pull from more than 230,000 investments made by nearly 13,000 venture capitalists.
Descriptive data analysis was used to separate AI performance from the rest of the venture market. That separation is what turns this from a general VC ranking into a specifically AI-focused one.
Background: the broader ranking came first
This is not the duo’s first leaderboard of the year. Their inaugural overall 2026 VC ranking arrived in June 2026, and Sequoia claimed the top spot there with 10,158 points.
In that earlier list, AI investments accounted for 64% of a16z’s total score.
More is on the way. A companion ranking of individual AI investors is scheduled for the week after the firm-level list, shifting the spotlight from institutions to the people actually making the calls.
What this means
For a16z, the result reinforces a strategic bet. The firm’s heavy tilt toward AI shows up clearly in its scores, and the AI ranking rewards that concentration.
The flip side is exposure. When 64% of your overall score in a general ranking is tied to a single sector, your standing depends heavily on how that sector performs.
For rival firms, the tight cluster behind a16z is the more interesting story. Lightspeed and Menlo are separated by under 1,000 points, which suggests the competition for second place is far more fluid than the competition for first.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Diego Almada Lopez. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.