The case for context graphs | Aaron Levie (Co-founder & CEO, Box)

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Feb 20, 2026

Aaron Levie, Co-founder and CEO of Box, a leader in enterprise content and workflows. He explores context graphs as institutional memory and decision traces. Short takes cover why systems of record matter for AI agents, how permissions and workflow wiring create moats, and which ops-heavy, exception-filled functions are ripe for disruption.

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INSIGHT

Victory Depends On Who Adds Context First

Incumbent systems can win by adding agent-friendly context or exposing APIs; otherwise new startups will ingest the same data.
Aaron frames the race: will Workday (or others) add required context or will startups pull that data externally?

INSIGHT

Access Controls Become A Strategic Moat

Permissions, access controls, and workflow wiring are a practical moat for incumbents when agents scale.
Box has years of organizational wiring (ACLs, permissions) that help control agent actions and security.

INSIGHT

Exception Heavy Workflows Are Prime Targets

High headcount and exception-heavy workflows are fertile ground for context-graph startups.
Examples include deal desk, underwriting, compliance reviews, and ops functions like RevOps or SecOps that carry uncaptured context.

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Aaron Levie has been on the podcast twice before. After we published our context graphs thesis, he wrote a response - so we invited him on to continue the conversation.
A context graph is institutional memory for how an organization actually makes decisions: not how the process doc says it should, but how it works in practice.
Enterprise software is very good at recording outcomes - the final price, the approved discount, the escalated ticket - but not the reasoning behind them. Which exceptions applied? What precedent mattered? Who approved what, and why?
We call these missing records decision traces. Over time, they accumulate into a context graph: a living, queryable map of how an enterprise actually makes decisions, stitched across systems and time so precedent becomes searchable. We think the companies that capture that layer will define the next generation of enterprise software.
Aaron read the piece and joined us to push it further. We get into how the services as software opportunity unfolds as agents scale, and what it actually takes to move them out of the sandbox and into production.

Chapters:

00:00 Intro: Aaron’s third time on the podcast!
00:43 What is a context graph?
01:35 Aaron’s take: this won’t be zero-sum
04:10 Why systems of record may become more valuable in a world with 100x more agents
05:26 The difference between data and context
06:28 The moat incumbents have: workflow wiring, permissions, access controls
10:35 Which functions are most vulnerable to disruption
15:43 The trillion-dollar greenfield: high headcount, exception-heavy workflows
16:20 Ops as a wedge: RevOps, DevOps, SecOps, and glue work between systems
19:27 How PlayerZero is building context graphs for real engineering workflows
20:48 Is permissioned inference possible?
21:27 “Agents can’t keep secrets”: why access controls are so important
27:45 What Box is building
29:33 Multimodal context: screenshots, audio, and video
32:50 Why vibe coding won’t change the software industry’s power-law
35:03 Aaron’s advice to founders