[buffington]

You could choose to interpret it as marketing spend or "buying relationships", sure. For me, there's enough negativity in the world - I don't want to spend time imagining more.

And why would I? A16Z have already explicitly stated their intent: "a thriving open source ecosystem is essential to building [ai's] future" and "We’ll support a small group of open source developers through grant funding (not an investment or SAFE note), giving them the opportunity to continue their work without the pressure to generate financial returns."

There's not a lot of spin on this. They want to be a leader in AI so they're investing in the people who build the tools that they use in pursuit of their commercial goals.