Amazon, Altimeter and Madrona Investors on Betting on AI Agents

Three investors explain where they are placing bets in what could be the largest year of venture investing on record. On this IA40 Summit panel, Madrona’s Sabrina Albert, Altimeter’s Jamin Ball, and Amazon’s Dan Grossman join Bloomberg’s Dina Bass to discuss how capital, speed, and agents are reshaping how companies get built and backed. What they cover: Why Madrona backs AI-native founders with a “prepared mind” as hundreds of companies chase the same idea How Altimeter thinks about the diffusion gap between model capability and real usage Amazon’s one-way door versus two-way door framework and its barbell approach to investing What Amazon learned from acquiring Annapurna Labs, the team behind Trainium and Graviton How each investor draws the line on what agents can access and send Chapters: 00:00 - Why Madrona Backs AI-Native Founders With a "Prepared Mind" 03:00 - Why Founder-Market Fit Still Leads the Investment Memo at Altimeter 04:00 - Amazon's One-Way Door vs Two-Way Door Framework for Fast Decisions 06:00 - What the AI "Diffusion Gap" Means for Startups, with Jamin Ball 08:00 - The Harness Layer: Memory, Context and Routing Where Madrona Is Investing 10:00 - What Amazon Learned From the Annapurna Acquisition and Custom Chips 13:00 - Pacing vs Pausing AI: How Investors Think About Slowdown Risk 14:00 - Why Jamin Ball Fears AI Repeating the Three Mile Island Nuclear Pause 17:00 - How Amazon Defines Agents and Its Bedrock and Agent Core Strategy 21:00 - How a Reference Checker Claude Skill Turns Hours Into 15 Email Drafts 23:00 - How Much Access Should an AI Agent Get to Your Email? 27:00 - Who Wins the Agent Layer and Where the Next $1 Trillion Gets Created