Aaron Levie, co-founder and CEO of Box, shared his insights on the evolving landscape of enterprise Software as a Service (SaaS) at a recent tech conference. He particularly focused on industrial uses, pointing out that AI agents are very much taking over the labor sector. They’ll never supplant traditional enterprise SaaS companies. While that optimism is apparent, Levie’s comments highlight a turning point when it comes to technology—and AI in particular—introducing both serious challenges and new opportunities.
Levie expressed his view that the upheaval caused by AI agents is a market opportunity, especially for startups. He noted that smaller firms are nimble. Instead, they have an amazing opportunity to design processes that allow them to embrace the new “agent-first” era that’s on the horizon. It’s the larger organizations that cannot pivot. Their current business processes frequently conflict with emerging AI technologies.
Levie made some of the most passionately prophetic statements we’ve heard about what lies ahead. We’ll have 100 times more ICE agents than we have people, 1,000 times maybe.” He argues that this proliferation will dramatically increase the amount of users in software systems. This number will be most dramatic as agents begin to take hold in the enterprise ecosystem.
Levie emphasized the danger in baking AI into workflows. As he laid out in his testimony, preserving the line between the deterministic world and AI-enabled black boxes is critical. He cautioned that when you’re doing something that’s mission-critical, you want to be careful. There have been previous cases where data has leaked through an agent, or an agent suddenly corrupted a production database. You’re going to want to carve out a clear line between the deterministic and non-deterministic parts of your software. This would create a permanent ‘church and state’ relationship between them.
The CEO posited that while larger companies are working to incorporate agents into their existing frameworks, startups can take a different approach. Smaller startups, which usually don’t have as many set processes in place, can find that innovation comes easier without the red tape of a larger company. After you centralize your knowledge through the business process, put it in writing and explicitly codify it in business logic, embedded in deterministic systems. This is incredibly important because the risk of something changing at any moment is off the charts,” Levie said.
Levie’s vision and hope perfectly describe the moment we find ourselves in today, one where an unprecedented shift like those seen with past platforms is taking place. He emphasized that we are living through an unprecedented opportunity that hasn’t happened in fifteen years. Beyond just this, a fundamental platform shift is occurring across technology, opening up unique opportunities for the next wave of startups to thrive.