Aaron Levie has long been known as one of tech’s most outspoken and insightful CEOs. As the co-founder and CEO of Box, a content management and collaboration platform powering over 100,000 organizations, Levie is now at the center of one of enterprise software’s most pressing questions on how do you build a real AI business without losing focus or going to war over models?
Speaking on the Mad Podcast, Levie opened up about Box’s AI strategy, what makes agent-based architecture valuable, and why he believes the majority of enterprise data still sits underutilized. “I would argue that probably for 95% of our data, people have things they would love to be able to do with it—but they just don't,” he said. Agents, he argued, could finally shift that equation by making once-unrealistic workflows feasible. “The thing I get excited about with agents is the expansion of what people can now do with software.”
Unlike some of its peers, Box has deliberately chosen not to build its own foundation model. “That is just a war you want to ride the tailwinds of, not play in,” Levie said. “We debated [fine-tuning]—for like 10 minutes. It’s not worth it. Things are changing too fast.” Instead, Box supports models from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google’s Gemini, with plans to support others like Meta and xAI. “Give us the API key, and we’ll plug it in,” Levie said. The goal is to remain flexible, focus on orchestration, and deliver utility instead of chasing breakthroughs.
