# AI will push companies toward smaller teams and faster security

Markdown copy of https://realalpha.app/s/ai-will-push-companies-toward-smaller-teams-and-faster/ on Real Alpha, the best minutes from long interviews with the people building AI. Cite and link the page, not this copy.

- Speaker: [Andy Jassy](https://realalpha.app/people/andy-jassy/) · Andy Jassy is CEO of Amazon. · Founded and led AWS, then became Amazon's CEO in 2021, steering its $220 billion AI buildout.
- Host: [Ben Horowitz](https://realalpha.app/people/ben-horowitz/) · Co-founder, a16z · Co-founded a16z and Opsware, sold to HP for $1.6 billion; wrote The Hard Thing About Hard Things.
- Host: [Erik Torenberg](https://realalpha.app/people/erik-torenberg/) · General partner, Andreessen Horowitz · Helped build Product Hunt; founded On Deck, Village Global and Turpentine.
- Show: a16z Podcast
- Episode: [Amazon CEO Andy Jassy on the $220 Billion AI Buildout](https://realalpha.app/v/-YMMRQ1qscI/), Oct 23, 2026
- Moment: 36:57 to 44:03 of the episode (7 min), playing on https://realalpha.app/s/ai-will-push-companies-toward-smaller-teams-and-faster/; the episode from there: https://realalpha.app/v/-YMMRQ1qscI/?t=2217

## Quote

> “the way that applications are going to have to be able to **respond to imminent security threats** is going to be in minutes.”
> — [Andy Jassy](https://realalpha.app/people/andy-jassy/) at [43:00](https://realalpha.app/v/-YMMRQ1qscI/?t=2580) · a16z Podcast

## Takeaways

1. AI lets small teams build working prototypes much faster.
2. Companies will need agent-ready code and constraints for updates.
3. Security response may need to move from days to minutes.

## About this segment

Andy Jassy says AI enables smaller, more cross-functional teams and predicts companies will need to rewrite much of their code for agents. He argues security fixes may need to ship in minutes.

From “Amazon CEO Andy Jassy on the $220 Billion AI Buildout”, Oct 23, 2026. [Watch the full episode](https://realalpha.app/v/-YMMRQ1qscI/)

## Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

[37:08](https://realalpha.app/v/-YMMRQ1qscI/?t=2228) So I think you said the Bedrock team rebuilt your inference engine with six engineers in 76 days, and that would have taken 40 people a year. So that's pretty different. And, you know, Amazon is kind of famous for the two pizza teams. So, like, what is your current organizational design thinking, given the technology? because it does seem to really change things. And it's making, you know, we got like super, super specialized over the years with, you know, designers and product managers and, you know, front-end engineers and back-end engineers and this and that and the other.

[37:51](https://realalpha.app/v/-YMMRQ1qscI/?t=2271) And now all of a sudden, like, everybody's a renaissance person. Yeah. And so how do you think about that in terms of org design? Yeah, I agree with what you're saying. I think that the bedrock experience that you alluded to was very eye-opening for everybody here. And we spent a bunch of time sharing that story internally to inspire people and remind people what's possible. Because over time, what ends up happening, I mean, I started the company 29 years ago.

[38:24](https://realalpha.app/v/-YMMRQ1qscI/?t=2304) I started as an assistant product manager. And I was the product manager for, I don't know, five products. Today, when companies get successful and they get bigger and the products get bigger, you end up where, you know, a product manager works on one product and they just own one slice of it. Like, they own pricing. Everybody becomes more specialized. And everybody accepts that that's the way you have to do business if you're building something big and successful.

[38:50](https://realalpha.app/v/-YMMRQ1qscI/?t=2330) And it's not. And it's definitely not when you look at what's happening with AI. And, you know, even just this past, if I look at the last week, you know, we're working on some things, you know, around agents in our consumer business. We have a whole bunch of investments there. But we had an idea that we really liked that we agreed on Thursday we were going to try and have like a real working prototype for that.

[39:18](https://realalpha.app/v/-YMMRQ1qscI/?t=2358) Again, we had four or five people who over the weekend had it operating in an 80% shippable way by Sunday. Those are different worlds that you live in. And so I think what it means for the future of organizations is I think, number one, I think that we're going to have fewer humans doing the work that they're doing today in the future than we have today. If you look at the amount of coding that's being done agentically, you look at the amount of customer service and business intelligence and research.

[40:00](https://realalpha.app/v/-YMMRQ1qscI/?t=2400) You fast forward to just thinking how spreadsheets are going to be built, like the number of lawyers. I just think you're going to have, you're not going to have no people, but you're not going to have as many humans as we've all thrown at scale as businesses have gotten bigger in the future. There are going to be different jobs and new jobs, some of which we know about, some of which we don't know about, that will arise as AI and robotics and space development.

[40:26](https://realalpha.app/v/-YMMRQ1qscI/?t=2426) You know, there are going to be all sorts of new jobs, but we're going to have fewer humans doing what they've done today. I think the teams will be much smaller than they are right now. You know, I think you're going to have smaller teams that have, they have people who can work cross-functionally. They don't only own one sliver because the models are going to be able to get them 80% of the way there on a lot of these different functions.

[40:55](https://realalpha.app/v/-YMMRQ1qscI/?t=2455) I think that every team will start at a much more advanced stage than we have in the past. And so I think you're going to be able to invent much more expansively and much more quickly. I do think there's a bunch of things that have to change. I think that, you know, the startups starting today, most of them are starting agentically and agent-native or AI-native right from the start. All the larger companies who've been in business for a while are going to have to figure out how to actually build at that same pace.

[41:31](https://realalpha.app/v/-YMMRQ1qscI/?t=2491) And I think that some of them will figure it out, and you always like when you have a big business with a lot of capabilities and a loyal customer base. Some of them will move very slowly to figure it out, and they will be more vulnerable, in my opinion, as startups. But I think you're going to have to – I predict that companies will have to rewrite almost all of their code to be agentically capable.

[41:57](https://realalpha.app/v/-YMMRQ1qscI/?t=2517) They're going to have to allow agents to be updating different pieces of code. You're going to have to build constraints there. I think if you just look at security, you know, security is, I mean, it's kind of interesting. If you look at all of the nervousness of the last month or two about models, they are focused on the more fantastical scenarios. And by the way, they're possible. Like, is it possible an evil botnet will take over, you know, everything?

[42:28](https://realalpha.app/v/-YMMRQ1qscI/?t=2548) I mean, I guess it's possible. And it's possible you can infuse robots with, you know, with malicious intent. They're all possible. I personally think we're going to figure that out together, you know, as an industry and private public segment. I think you've got to start by paying attention to some of the things. Yeah, but I mean, the thing that's interesting is that I don't think that there is enough discussion about the more immediate term risks, which are really around cybersecurity.

[42:55](https://realalpha.app/v/-YMMRQ1qscI/?t=2575) These models are so, they find so many more vulnerabilities than you did before and that humans, you know, weren't finding. And maybe you could argue if they could or couldn't, but they just weren't finding. And so if you fast forward them, I think that the way that applications are going to have to be able to respond to imminent security threats is going to be in minutes. And today, if you think about it, you find vulnerabilities, people classify the vulnerabilities, people develop patches.

[43:28](https://realalpha.app/v/-YMMRQ1qscI/?t=2608) And then even if you do that part quick, most companies take a long time to deploy because there are all these dependencies. you're going to have to deploy in minutes. And so if you don't actually have your applications rewritten to be able to be updated by agents, you're going to have no chance in that new world. And so I just think, you know, all organizations, they're going to be reinvented. And I think the companies that prioritize are going to be in much better shape than those that don't.

[43:54](https://realalpha.app/v/-YMMRQ1qscI/?t=2634) Yeah.