Marc Andreessen: checked claims

Scores by kind of claim

Each kind of claim is scored on its own, out of 100: the share that held up, with the range it likely falls in. Fewer resolved claims give a wider range.

Factual claims

Statements about the present or the past, checked against the record: did they hold up?

67 61 73

High confidence, 94 factual claims resolved. From 11 documents, 1995 to 2026; 19 documents sampled from 30 candidates found.

Not scored: 44 unresolvable, 17 checkable only against their own records.

See the factual claims
Predictions

Statements about events outside the person's control, checked once they fell due: did they come true?

60 44 76

Low confidence, 11 predictions resolved. From 6 documents, 1995 to 2025; 19 documents sampled from 30 candidates found.

Not scored: 41 unresolvable, 1 checkable only against their own records. 4 more fall due later.
Does not yet allow for how likely each prediction was when made.

See the predictions
Promises

Commitments to the person's or organisation's own future action, with something to deliver: was it delivered?

Insufficient record: 0 promises resolved, 5 needed for a score.

Not scored: 3 unresolvable.

See the promises

All types combined: 66 (likely 61 to 72, high confidence), from 105 claims: 94 factual claims, 11 predictions. It mixes kinds of claim in different proportions for different people, so compare people kind by kind.

Marc Andreessen's claims

105 claims · page 1 of 2

105 claims, sorted by newest said. Choose a claim to read it in full.
Verdict	Kind	Said	Claim	Topic
Mixed	Factual	31 Mar 2026	The recent corporate layoffs were not caused by AI. Factual · 31 Mar 2026	AI, the economy and work
Mostly true	Factual	7 Jan 2026	The price of AI is falling faster than Moore's Law. Factual · 7 Jan 2026	AI, the economy and work
Mostly true	Factual	7 Jan 2026	The DeepSeek model is completely open-source and anyone can download and run it. Factual · 7 Jan 2026	AI capabilities
Resolved true	Factual	7 Jan 2026	Within 6 to 12 months of a frontier model's release, a small model with the same capabilities appears. Factual · 7 Jan 2026	AI capabilities
Mostly true	Factual	7 Jan 2026	The revenue growth rate of leading AI companies is faster than that of any previous technology wave Andreessen has seen. Factual · 7 Jan 2026	AI, the economy and work
Mostly true	Factual	7 Jan 2026	Neural networks were explored by a small group of people for about 80 years. Factual · 7 Jan 2026	AI capabilities
Resolved true	Factual	7 Jan 2026	Consumer AI products commonly have monthly price tiers of $200 or $300. Factual · 7 Jan 2026	AI, the economy and work
Mostly true	Factual	7 Jan 2026	In the 1980s, when Andreessen was in college, AI was a niche field and everyone thought it would never come true. Factual · 7 Jan 2026	AI capabilities
Resolved true	Factual	7 Jan 2026	There are 5 billion people on Earth using some version of mobile broadband Internet. Factual · 7 Jan 2026	Technology
Mixed	Factual	7 Jan 2026	Within less than 12 months, four or five Chinese companies caught up to the frontier of the AI industry. Factual · 7 Jan 2026	AI capabilities
Resolved true	Factual	7 Jan 2026	Cursor, though it started by calling large models, is building its own AI model. Factual · 7 Jan 2026	AI, the economy and work
Mostly false	Factual	8 Oct 2025	ChatGPT is today a better doctor than your doctor, with almost a hundred percent certainty. Factual · 8 Oct 2025	AI capabilities
Mixed	Factual	8 Oct 2025	A significant percentage of U.S. jobs are licensed, unionized or civil service in a way that means they cannot literally be replaced. Factual · 8 Oct 2025	AI, the economy and work
Mixed	Factual	26 Jan 2025	Political donations in Silicon Valley go 90 to 99% to one party. Factual · 26 Jan 2025	AI policy and governance
Mostly true	Factual	26 Jan 2025	Substack started from scratch and declared up front that it would be a free speech platform. Factual · 26 Jan 2025	Their own work or organisation
Resolved true	Prediction	26 Jan 2025	Andreessen said energy independence and large net energy exports are a matter of choice, and that he thinks the new Trump administration will choose to pursue them. Prediction · 26 Jan 2025	AI policy and governance
Mostly true	Prediction	26 Jan 2025	The incoming Trump administration will do as much as it can through executive orders and then use legislation and regulatory changes for the rest. Prediction · 26 Jan 2025	AI policy and governance
Mostly true	Factual	26 Jan 2025	Marc Andreessen is a volunteer for the Trump administration when helpful, does not make its decisions and cannot speak for it. Factual · 26 Jan 2025	AI policy and governance
Mixed	Factual	26 Jan 2025	The Stanford Internet Observatory was basically funded by the federal government to be a third-party censorship operation. Factual · 26 Jan 2025	Philosophy, ethics and society
Mostly true	Factual	26 Jan 2025	The US Constitution requires Congress to authorize money to be spent by the executive branch. Factual · 26 Jan 2025	AI policy and governance
Mostly true	Factual	26 Jan 2025	Under the current interpretation of appropriations, a president who does not want to spend appropriated money cannot decline to spend it. Factual · 26 Jan 2025	AI policy and governance
Mostly false	Factual	26 Jan 2025	Getting Amish voters to the polls was one of the reasons Trump won the 2024 election. Factual · 26 Jan 2025	AI policy and governance
Mostly true	Factual	26 Jan 2025	Incumbent universities, through accreditation, are in complete control of who gets access to federal student loan money. Factual · 26 Jan 2025	Other
Mostly true	Factual	26 Jan 2025	Marc Andreessen does not speak for DOGE and is not in charge of DOGE. Factual · 26 Jan 2025	AI policy and governance
Mostly true	Factual	26 Jan 2025	The United States is the main place where the world's best and brightest foreign students get educated. Factual · 26 Jan 2025	AI, the economy and work
Mostly true	Factual	26 Jan 2025	The US is adding a trillion dollars to the national debt every 100 days, and it is now passing the size of the Defense Department budget and compounding. Factual · 26 Jan 2025	Economics and markets
Mixed	Factual	26 Jan 2025	The system that has been built for these people is paid for virtually 100% by taxpayer money. Factual · 26 Jan 2025	Economics and markets
Mostly true	Factual	26 Jan 2025	Marc Andreessen has made the argument in favour of high-skilled immigration and H-1B visas many times. Factual · 26 Jan 2025	AI, the economy and work
Mostly true	Factual	26 Jan 2025	Marc Andreessen joined the Facebook board in 2007. Factual · 26 Jan 2025	Their own work or organisation
Mostly true	Factual	16 Oct 2023	Markets are by far the most effective way to lift vast numbers of people out of poverty, and always have been. Factual · 16 Oct 2023	Economics and markets
Mostly false	Factual	16 Oct 2023	The Precautionary Principle was invented to prevent the large-scale deployment of civilian nuclear power. Factual · 16 Oct 2023	AI policy and governance
Mostly false	Factual	16 Oct 2023	The only three sources of economic growth are population growth, natural resource utilization, and technology. Factual · 16 Oct 2023	Economics and markets
Mixed	Factual	16 Oct 2023	In a market system, society captures about 98% of the value of technological innovation, a 50:1 ratio to the innovating company's share. Factual · 16 Oct 2023	Economics and markets
Mixed	Factual	2 Sep 2023	Richard Nixon created a project in 1972 called Project Independence, and proposed building 1,000 new US nuclear reactors. Factual · 2 Sep 2023	Economics and markets
Mixed	Factual	2 Sep 2023	In the research literature, IQ is typically linked to outcomes with a correlation of about 0.4 to 0.5. Factual · 2 Sep 2023	Science and research methods
Mostly true	Factual	2 Sep 2023	Ray Kurzweil kind of took that idea to the next level and applied it specifically to AI. Factual · 2 Sep 2023	AI safety and alignment
Mostly false	Factual	2 Sep 2023	The precautionary principle was developed by the German Greens in the 1970s. Factual · 2 Sep 2023	Philosophy, ethics and society
Mostly false	Prediction	2 Sep 2023	The EU may pass a law as soon as October 2023 that effectively bans AI inside the EU. Prediction · 2 Sep 2023	AI policy and governance
Mostly true	Factual	2 Sep 2023	That did not happen, after the President created the EPA and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which aimed to prevent it. Factual · 2 Sep 2023	Economics and markets
Resolved true	Prediction	2 Sep 2023	There will be Chinese AI systems that embody Communist ideology. Prediction · 2 Sep 2023	AI policy and governance
Mostly true	Factual	2 Sep 2023	Almost nothing is 40% causative of anything, apart from a very small number of exceptions. Factual · 2 Sep 2023	Science and research methods
Mostly true	Factual	2 Sep 2023	AI development has a critical mass basically in two places in the world, the United States and China. Factual · 2 Sep 2023	AI compute, hardware and data
Mostly true	Factual	12 Jun 2023	The Transformer algorithm, a neural net form that works in a sort of generalized way, was a recent theoretical breakthrough. Factual · 12 Jun 2023	AI capabilities
Mixed	Factual	12 Jun 2023	AI development has a critical mass basically in two places in the world, the United States and China. Factual · 12 Jun 2023	AI compute, hardware and data
Resolved true	Factual	12 Jun 2023	The Transformer algorithm was invented in 2017. Factual · 12 Jun 2023	AI capabilities
Mostly false	Factual	12 Jun 2023	Research establishes that in human affairs, higher intelligence leads to better outcomes in essentially every measurable aspect of human welfare and life quality. Factual · 12 Jun 2023	Philosophy, ethics and society
Mostly true	Factual	12 Jun 2023	As of June 2023, the U.S. government was both alarmed about deepfakes and trying to outlaw blockchains. Factual · 12 Jun 2023	AI policy and governance
Mixed	Prediction	12 Jun 2023	Andreessen said he was pretty confident that within roughly two years of June 2023, AI systems' limited persistent memory across sessions would be a solved problem. Prediction · 12 Jun 2023	AI timelines and forecasting
Mostly true	Factual	12 Jun 2023	As of June 2023 there are chip shortages throughout the AI ecosystem, and NVIDIA cannot make enough chips. Factual · 12 Jun 2023	AI compute, hardware and data
Mostly true	Prediction	12 Jun 2023	Andreessen said he thought the rate of AI technological improvement from mid-2023 onward would be very rapid. Prediction · 12 Jun 2023	AI timelines and forecasting
Mostly false	Factual	12 Jun 2023	Outside the San Francisco Bay Area, AI development is overwhelmingly in Beijing and Shanghai. Factual · 12 Jun 2023	AI compute, hardware and data
Mixed	Factual	12 Jun 2023	Hundreds of studies' conclusions on the benefits of intelligence all correlate with fluid intelligence, the ability to rapidly assimilate knowledge and use it to solve problems. Factual · 12 Jun 2023	Philosophy, ethics and society
Resolved true	Factual	12 Jun 2023	The AI being discussed is not, strictly speaking, human intelligence. Factual · 12 Jun 2023	AI capabilities
Mostly true	Factual	18 Apr 2020	Top-end universities can teach only a microscopic percentage of the 4 million new 18-year-olds in the US each year. Factual · 18 Apr 2020	Economics and markets
Resolved true	Factual	18 Apr 2020	As of April 2020 there were no therapies or vaccine for the coronavirus, despite years of warnings about bat-borne coronaviruses. Factual · 18 Apr 2020	Biosecurity
Mostly true	Factual	18 Apr 2020	Energy experts say all carbon-based electrical power generation on the planet could be replaced by a few thousand new zero-emission nuclear reactors. Factual · 18 Apr 2020	Technology
Mixed	Factual	18 Apr 2020	American manufacturing output is higher than ever. Factual · 18 Apr 2020	Economics and markets
Mostly true	Factual	18 Apr 2020	Milton Friedman said the great public sector mistake is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results. Factual · 18 Apr 2020	Philosophy, ethics and society
Mostly false	Factual	18 Apr 2020	The US government has never built a system to distribute money quickly to citizens and businesses when needed. Factual · 18 Apr 2020	AI policy and governance
Resolved true	Factual	18 Apr 2020	As of April 2020 the US lacked enough coronavirus tests and test materials, including cotton swabs and common reagents. Factual · 18 Apr 2020	Other global risks
Mixed	Factual	18 Apr 2020	As of April 2020 there were not enough ventilators, negative pressure rooms and ICU beds. Factual · 18 Apr 2020	Other global risks
Mostly false	Factual	18 Apr 2020	One-to-one tutoring can reliably increase education outcomes by two standard deviations (the Bloom two-sigma effect). Factual · 18 Apr 2020	Science and research methods
Resolved true	Prediction	18 Apr 2020	The essay "It's Time to Build" will be the target of criticism. Prediction · 18 Apr 2020	Their own work or organisation
Mostly true	Factual	18 Apr 2020	Things built in huge quantities, like computers and TVs, drop rapidly in price. Factual · 18 Apr 2020	Economics and markets
Resolved true	Factual	1 Jan 2018	Andreessen Horowitz has since reversed course almost completely and is now deeply invested in healthcare. Factual · 1 Jan 2018	Their own work or organisation
Resolved true	Factual	1 Jan 2018	Supersonic passenger flight with the Concorde existed previously but no longer exists. Factual · 1 Jan 2018	Technology
Mostly true	Factual	1 Jan 2018	A single individual can now build a self-driving car, whereas ten years ago it was a DARPA-funded research challenge. Factual · 1 Jan 2018	AI capabilities
Resolved true	Factual	1 Jan 2018	In the American economy, the rate of job creation and destruction is falling rather than rising. Factual · 1 Jan 2018	AI, the economy and work
Mostly true	Factual	1 Jan 2018	Gross job creation and destruction figures are not reported; the US destroys over 5 million jobs and creates over 6 million jobs per quarter. Factual · 1 Jan 2018	AI, the economy and work
Mostly true	Factual	1 Jan 2018	This new AI technology is the same technology Google's AI used to beat a human Go player. Factual · 1 Jan 2018	AI capabilities
Mostly false	Factual	1 Jan 2018	The sesame scene in season one of Silicon Valley is loosely based on Peter Thiel. Factual · 1 Jan 2018	Other
Resolved true	Factual	1 Jan 2018	Warren Buffett invested in Heinz ketchup. Factual · 1 Jan 2018	Economics and markets
Mostly false	Factual	1 Jan 2018	When Andreessen arrived in Silicon Valley, the overwhelming mood was that the PC was finished and the Valley was probably done too. Factual · 1 Jan 2018	Economics and markets
Mostly true	Prediction	1 Jan 2018	In the three months after January 2018, the US economy will destroy more jobs than the World Economic Forum projected AI would destroy over the next five years. Prediction · 1 Jan 2018	AI, the economy and work
Mostly true	Factual	1 Jan 2018	Roof inspection, which involves a person climbing up on a roof and taking notes, is a fairly dangerous job. Factual · 1 Jan 2018	Economics and markets
Mostly true	Factual	1 Jan 2018	Peter Thiel flatly says the iPhone does not count as innovation. Factual · 1 Jan 2018	Their own work or organisation
Mostly true	Factual	1 Jan 2018	Bitcoin is still working today exactly as it did in previous years, despite crashes. Factual · 1 Jan 2018	Economics and markets
Mostly true	Factual	1 Jan 2018	Andreessen Horowitz initially made no healthcare-related investments. Factual · 1 Jan 2018	Their own work or organisation
Resolved true	Factual	1 Jan 2018	Andreessen said "we" repeatedly see people fail because they price too low ("too hungry to eat") and so cannot afford the sales and marketing needed to get anybody to buy the product. Factual · 1 Jan 2018	Economics and markets
Mostly true	Factual	1 Jan 2018	Silicon Valley has become increasingly assertive in entering other industries directly, rather than only selling tools. Factual · 1 Jan 2018	Economics and markets
Mixed	Factual	1 Jan 2018	Andreessen Horowitz's portfolio companies are getting more assertive about entering markets that earlier founders may not have been willing to enter. Factual · 1 Jan 2018	Economics and markets
Mostly true	Factual	28 May 2017	In 1992 it was widely held that the internet was for academics and nerds, with no use case for ordinary people. Factual · 28 May 2017	Technology
Mostly true	Factual	28 May 2017	The University of Illinois, where Andreessen went to college, was then one of four US universities government-funded as hubs for NSFNET, which became the internet. Factual · 28 May 2017	Technology
Mostly false	Factual	28 May 2017	ARPA (now DARPA) funded a military network originally conceived for nuclear command and control. Factual · 28 May 2017	Technology
Mixed	Factual	20 Aug 2011	As of 2011, Amazon was the world's largest bookseller. Factual · 20 Aug 2011	Economics and markets
Mixed	Factual	20 Aug 2011	As of August 2011, major public technology companies had all-time low price/earnings ratios. Factual · 20 Aug 2011	Economics and markets
Mostly true	Factual	20 Aug 2011	Skype, the fastest growing telecom company, was just bought by Microsoft for $8.5 billion. Factual · 20 Aug 2011	Economics and markets
Mixed	Factual	20 Aug 2011	As of 2011, Netflix was the largest video service by number of subscribers. Factual · 20 Aug 2011	Economics and markets
Resolved false	Prediction	20 Aug 2011	Within 10 years of 2011, at least five billion people worldwide will own smartphones. Prediction · 20 Aug 2011	Technology
Resolved true	Factual	20 Aug 2011	Marc Andreessen said Disney had to buy Pixar, a software company, to remain relevant in animated movies. Factual · 20 Aug 2011	Economics and markets
Resolved true	Factual	20 Aug 2011	Videogame makers are today's fastest growing entertainment companies, with the industry growing to $60 billion from $30 billion five years earlier. Factual · 20 Aug 2011	Economics and markets
Mostly false	Prediction	Jun 1995	George Gilder predicts that within five to ten years the Internet will essentially be free. Prediction · Jun 1995	Economics and markets
Mostly true	Factual	Jun 1995	Netscape did not have a major sales force in Europe as of June 1995. Factual · Jun 1995	Their own work or organisation
Mostly true	Factual	Jun 1995	The government set the OSI networking standard, which nobody uses. Factual · Jun 1995	AI policy and governance
Mostly true	Factual	Jun 1995	Cryptography is export-controlled by the US government as a munition, and Netscape makes exportable versions of its software, which are the ones predominantly used on the Internet. Factual · Jun 1995	AI policy and governance
Mostly true	Factual	Jun 1995	The Internet already existed when Andreessen began working at the university lab, and everybody there used it. Factual · Jun 1995	Technology
Mostly true	Factual	Jun 1995	The networks in question all use TCP/IP, which was not a government standard. Factual · Jun 1995	Technology
Mostly true	Prediction	Jun 1995	Catalogs of Internet resources will be supported by advertising in the future. Prediction · Jun 1995	Economics and markets
Mostly true	Factual	Jun 1995	In June 1995, Andreessen said he thought Netscape had about six million Navigator users on the public network, not counting users behind firewalls. Factual · Jun 1995	Technology
Mixed	Factual	Jun 1995	Early in his time at the University of Illinois, Andreessen started working in a research lab at the university's physics research facility. Factual · Jun 1995	Their own work or organisation

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Marc Andreessen

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Prediction Economics and markets

“The catalog of resources on the Internet will be supported by advertising in the future.”

Marc Andreessen, Netscape founder and COO June 1995 Smithsonian Oral and Video Histories: Marc Andreessen (Smithsonian)

Catalogs of Internet resources will be supported by advertising in the future.

Mostly true True in substance, wrong in a detail.

What would count as true or false

The claim is that catalogs of Internet resources will be supported mainly by advertising. Such catalogs include web directories, portals and search engines that index and help people find online resources. TRUE: the dominant catalogs and search services after 1995 were funded mainly by advertising, for example Yahoo's directory and portal and Google Search. MOSTLY TRUE: advertising became a major funding source, but some leading catalogs relied substantially on other models. MOSTLY FALSE: advertising played a role, but the leading catalogs were funded mainly by subscriptions, licensing or other means. FALSE: Internet catalogs and search services were not supported by advertising in any significant way.

Evidence

[PDF] Web's Missing Links (Prepublication Draft) Thomas Haigh -- 1 Thomas Haigh (author's prepublication draft of a chapter for MIT Press, 2007) · 2007
“Search sites and portals command the lion’s share of the world’s Internet advertising revenue, making them the most successful of all Internet information businesses.”
[PDF] Web's Missing Links (Prepublication Draft) Thomas Haigh -- 1 Thomas Haigh (author's prepublication draft of a chapter for MIT Press, 2007) · 2007
“In contrast, subscription-based Web search services had little appeal, because the same service was always available free from other search engines.”
Surviving in Today's Search World - ClickZ ClickZ (internet.com) · 5 December 2001
“The engines that don’t use paid inclusion are Google, Open Directory Project (ODP), and Northern Light, although Google provides AdWords as paid placement.”
Lear All About Our Directory ODP (static snapshot of the former DMOZ directory, run by former DMOZ editors) · 18 December 2018
“The Yahoo! Directory shut down in 2014 in spite of charging a recurring annual fee of $299 and being one of the earliest web directories.”

Reasoning

A 2007 history chapter says search sites and portals take the largest share of the world's Internet advertising revenue, making them the most successful Internet information businesses (E1). The same chapter says subscription-based Web search had little appeal because free search engines offered the same service (E2). A 2001 report says Google provided AdWords paid placement (E3). However, the Yahoo! Directory charged an annual listing fee (E4), and the 2001 report describes paid inclusion at other engines (E3), so some catalogs leaned on other models, and no source gives a revenue breakdown showing advertising was the main funding source.

Cite this claim

Marc Andreessen, “Catalogs of Internet resources will be supported by advertising in the future.” (said June 1995). Verdict: mostly true. Reliability API, claim c_8d8c40f71527, method 0.1.0+c876030c. https://epistacklabs.com/claims/c_8d8c40f71527

Claims without a verdict

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