a16z Releases State of Markets II Highlighting Hardware Resurgence and AI Market Dynamics

a16z Releases State of Markets II Highlighting Hardware Resurgence and AI Market Dynamics a16z's second State of Markets report outlines tech's evolving role in capital markets, showing that the sector drives the majority of equity earnings while capital rotates heavily toward hardware, power, and physical infrastructure. Tech contributed approximately 76% of S&P 500 total earnings growth in 2026 as of late August. Capital has rotated from software toward physical hardware, semiconductors, and power infrastructure, funded by hyperscaler cash flows and debt. Despite rapid innovation, compute demand continues to outpace supply, maintaining strong pricing and residual values even for older chips like the A100. AI adoption remains shallow: roughly 2% of S&P 500 firms track quantifiable AI metrics, and only about 2% of US households paid for an AI service as of April. Rotation from Bits to Atoms and Compute Economics The market has experienced a significant rotation toward hardware, energy, and physical infrastructure after years of software dominance. Spurred by AI buildouts, reshoring, and defense needs, demand for cyclical industries like semiconductors and networking is booming. Although analysts expected rapid obsolescence for graphics processors, compute demand continues to exceed supply, keeping rental rates and valuations resilient even for previous-generation chips like Nvidia's A100. Immature AI Adoption and the Software Valuation Shift Enterprise and consumer AI adoption remains widespread but largely shallow, with only 2% of S&P 500 companies reporting tracked performance metrics and minimal paying consumer penetration. Concurrently, public software firms experienced a market re-pricing rather than an outright collapse. Following the end of zero interest-rate policy, SaaS companies prioritized profit over growth; by 2026, about 75% are profitable, but only roughly 30% are growing above 20%, resulting in lower aggregate valuation multiples.

a16z发布第二期《市场状况》报告：从软件转向原子，AI算力需求与市场重估 a16z发布了第二期《市场状况》（State of Markets II）报告，梳理了2026年资本市场与科技领域的演变。报告指出科技已成为驱动标普500盈利的核心引擎，市场正由软件主导转向硬件与基础设施（“原子”），算力需求持续超过供给，而软件行业经历的是从高增长向盈利转型的估值重估而非末日。 科技板块主导资本市场盈利，截至2026年8月下旬贡献了标普500指数约76%的总盈利增长。 市场资金从“比特”流向“原子”，半导体、电力、网络及国防等重资产和硬件基础设施迎来投资复兴。 AI算力需求持续超额，旧款GPU（如A100）租金与残值坚挺，并未因快速折旧而贬值。 AI商业化落地仍处早期，标普500企业中仅约2%追踪量化指标，美国仅约2%家庭为AI付费。 科技成全周期引擎，硬件与“原子世界”复兴 金融危机后科技公司曾凭高增长和轻资产模式成为资本宠儿，而如今科技已不仅是一个板块，更演变为定义整体经济周期的核心力量，截至2026年8月下旬贡献了标普500约76%的盈利增长。与此同时，资本焦点从软件转向了“原子”世界：AI基建拉动了半导体、电力和网络等重资本周期行业的暴涨，并由超大规模云厂商的自由现金流及债务提供资金支持；加上国防开支、电网电气化、制造业回流和机器人技术的发展，硬件与基础设施重回投资舞台中心。 算力供不应求，GPU残值反常走强 尽管有市场空头担忧GPU在3至4年内会过时，但目前算力需求曲线仍在急剧上扬，算力供不应求的局面让旧款芯片保持强劲实用性。通常理应随时间下降的租赁费率和芯片残值出现逆向走高，较旧的A100芯片定价在报告期内甚至持平或高于年初水平。更便宜、更先进的智能模型不仅没有挤压生态，反而让整个硬件链条的资产寿命超出市场预期。 AI落地仍处早期，算力负荷先行 在GPU持续满负荷运转的同时，AI的实际落地广而不深。在标普500指数成分股公司中，虽然近30%声称AI产生量化影响，但仅约2%的公司报告了具体追踪指标，智能体（agent）的大规模应用占比极小；在消费端，截至4月仅约2%的美国主流家庭为AI服务付费。这表明当前算力紧俏是在应用渗透率极低的初级阶段下发生的。 SaaS并未消亡，核心在于估值重估 针对年初“AI将终结SaaS”的悲观论调，实际情况更为理性。零利率政策（ZIRP）结束后，资本成本上升迫使软件公司放弃单纯追求烧钱扩张，转向稳健盈利：2022年市场充斥着高增长但亏损的标的，而到2026年已有约75%的公司实现盈利，但维持20%以上增速的公司降至约30%。软件板块的普遍回落主要源于低增速不再享有超高估值倍数的合理重估，而非行业覆灭。

We are pleased to release the second edition of [a16z’s State of Markets](https://a16z.com/state-of-markets-report-2). If you recall the [first State of Markets](https://www.a16z.news/p/state-of-markets) (and even if you don’t), then you know what to expect for SoM II: the canonical chartapalooza of 2026 from the perspective of equity markets and tech (for the first two quarters, at least). Behold, just a small preview of what’s inside. As a force in capital markets, tech really took off following the GFC. After the housing bust and credit crunch, tech offered a high-growth, capital-light alternative to the asset-wary. Perhaps more importantly, tech offered massive embedded operating leverage, given substantially untapped TAM, and software’s near-zero marginal cost. Hindsight is 20/20, but the investors who remained skeptical that loss-making techcos would ever grow into high-margin machines, missed out on the theme of the previous decade. That’s all true, and software did, in fact, eat the world, but tech’s centrality to capital markets has risen to a whole other level: Tech has steadily compounded earnings growth, albeit off a lower base, much more so relative to the field. Since 2023, however, it’s fair to say that tech is the earnings growth story, contributing \~76% of the SP500’s total earnings growth in 2026 (as of late August). What lies beneath that earnings growth is an interesting story in and of itself, but you can’t really call tech just a sector anymore. In the old days, durable goods defined the cycle–houses, dishwashers, cars, etc.--but tech has taken their place. Tech is everywhere and in everything. Tech is the everything cycle, now. Within tech, the theme of the year (and beyond), has been the rotation from bits to atoms. While software dominated the previous tech cycle, hardware is now the star of the show, and it’s pretty easy to see why: The AI buildout has caused a surge in demand for traditionally sleepy, cyclical, and capital intensive industries like semiconductors (but power and networking, as well). That demand has been funded in large part by the historically massive profits generated by the world’s largest tech companies–functionally converting hyperscaler free cashflow into semiconductor free cashflow—but increasingly by debt, as well. It’s not *just* AI that’s spawned a revival for the world of atoms, however. Global infrastructure needs are measured in trillions, defense spending is rising, grids are grappling with the electrification of everything, manufacturing is being reshored, and robots and robotaxis are inbound. In all events, hardware and infrastructure have emerged as the apple of the market’s eye, after years of trailing in software’s wake. Both public and private equity is funding innovation in compute, memory, power, robotics, manufacturing, and defense, with an intensity we haven’t seen in decades (if not longer). The point being: atoms are so back. On the subject of all that capex, one thing has been clear: demand for compute is still outpacing supply. At least one prominent bear of the buildout expressed some skepticism whether all this money invested in GPUs could possibly be worth it, given that they’d become obsolete in 3-4 years’ time. It’s great that Nvidia is selling B200s like gangbusters, but what does that mean for all the A100s that were installed a year or two before? Well, for now at least, it turns out that the upward inflecting demand curve for AI-compute has meant that the A100s are still pretty useful: Rental rates (and thereby residual values for GPUs) are supposed to decrease over time, but that’s not really what’s been happening. As intelligence gets cheaper, demand for compute is only rising, causing GPU pricing to climb *upwards* for the latest chips (and stay pretty for the older ones). Even the A100 is pricing at-or-above what it was at the beginning of the year. The story is far from over, of course, but so far, neither compute nor model advancements have been a zero-sum game. Better, cheaper, intelligence is accruing value to the entire ecosystem, with both older chips and models retaining substantial value well past the expiration dates assigned by the bears. And, oh, by the way, all of this is happening while AI adoption remains relatively immature. Adoption is broad, but for the most part, it’s relatively shallow: While nearly 30% of SP500 companies report some “quantifiable impact” of AI, only \~2% are reporting any tracked metric. The same goes for agentic use-cases, where a tiny share of the overall userbase is meaningfully deploying agents with any scale. Likewise, on the consumer side, paid penetration is still tiny: As of April, barely \~2% of US households were paying for some AI service. The number is higher now, and growing, but it’s still tiny in the big scheme of things. The point is that GPUs are already running hot, even while the data indicates that it’s still so early when it comes to mature AI adoption and utilization. The year started with the declaration that software was dead, a sure fire victim of AI’s vibe-coded everything. SaaSpocalypse was nigh. *Run for the hills, enterprise SaaS, and don’t let the door hit you on the way out.* Reality, as it often is, turns out to be a bit more nuanced than that. There was surely a sell-off, albeit a more discerning one than “pocalypse” would imply, and while AI (or the threat of AI) is definitely playing a role, it’s not the only thing. The actual thing about public software is that some part of this reckoning, or really a re-rating, was a long time coming: Since the end of ZIRP, techcos (but not just techcos) traded growth for profitability. Back in ‘22, the market was full of high-growth, mostly unprofitable software businesses, but by 2026, the story has inverted: \~75% are profitable, but only \~30% are growing 20%+. It makes sense, insofar as higher interest rates are intended to make capital relatively scarce, and so companies wisely pivoted from loss-making growth, to a more self-sustainable, slower-and-steadier growth. That’s all well and good, but slower-growth companies do not beget high-growth multiples, at least not for long, and eventually the new “slower-growth” normal caught up to software. Not for everyone, of course. Fast-growing companies are still trading at multiples in line with historical averages (albeit not ZIRP peaks), but there are simply fewer of those now, so the sector as a whole was broadly repriced. There’s been no apocalypse for software, but there has definitely been a “prove it.” And finally, while the lion’s share of the presentation covers what’s been, we’d be remiss if we didn’t offer some thoughts on where we think things may be going: We expect that AI will expand the surface area of demand. That means advancing towards more mature adoption across enterprise and consumer, but also pushing out into entirely new frontiers in robotics, biotech, health and AD. In general, the technology is improving at an exponential pace, and while no one can predict the future, given the rate and pace of change, we’re pretty confident that this cycle isn’t going to be like any previous cycle. *This newsletter is provided for informational purposes only, and should not be relied upon as legal, business, investment, or tax advice. Furthermore, this content is not investment advice, nor is it intended for use by any investors or prospective investors in any a16z funds. This newsletter may link to other websites or contain other information obtained from third-party sources - a16z has not independently verified nor makes any representations about the current or enduring accuracy of such information. If this content includes third-party advertisements, a16z has not reviewed such advertisements and does not endorse any advertising content or related companies contained therein. 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