The a16z Show The Agent Era: Building Software Beyond Chat with Box CEO Aaron Levie
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Apr 8, 2026 
Aaron Levie, Box cofounder and CEO known for sharp takes on enterprise software and AI, dives into the rise of agents as software users. The conversation explores why coding tools work better than many knowledge-work agents. It also gets into abstraction layers, security and governance roadblocks, systems of record under pressure, and why backend quality may matter more than slick interfaces.
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Useful Agents Need More Than Just Code Generation
- Enterprise agents will mix APIs, computer use, and code generation rather than relying on a single interaction style.
- Aaron Levie says a Box agent decides whether to use an existing skill, call a Box tool, or write code on the fly for novel document operations.
Agents Can Unlock Dormant Value In Enterprise Software
- AI may unlock software value humans never used because agents can navigate sprawling enterprise interfaces far better than employees.
- Steven Sinofsky points to SAP reports and simple Excel charts as tasks blocked less by missing features than by human difficulty finding and combining them.
Enterprise Agents Break The Human User Model
- Agent-first enterprises face a new identity problem because autonomous software cannot cleanly be treated as just another employee.
- Aaron Levie says agents need oversight, can be prompt-injected, and may leak anything in their context window, making shared access and delegated authority risky.