Are 95% of Businesses Really Getting No Return on AI Investment? — With Aaron Levie

Aaron Levie is the CEO of Box. Levie joins Big Technology to discuss the reports that a vast majority of businesses are not getting a return on their AI investments. Levie shares his takeaways from the reports, gives a rebuttal, and discusses the reality on the ground. Stay tuned for the second half where we separate hype from reality in the AI agent conversation. Tune in for a wide-ranging, post-Boxworks deep dive on where AI is heading in the coming years. --- Enjoying Big Technology Podcast? Please rate us five stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ in your podcast app of choice. Want a discount for Big Technology on Substack + Discord? Here’s 25% off for the first year: ⁠https://www.bigtechnology.com/subscribe?coupon=0843016b⁠ Questions? Feedback? Write to: bigtechnologypodcast@gmail.com Chapters: 00:00 Intro and MIT ROI study 04:41 Internal builds versus applied solutions 08:02 Reengineering work to use AI 10:26 Pilots, failures, and early adoption 13:22 Employees using AI personally 15:10 Document generation and context grounding 20:01 Startups managing agents for scale 25:19 Consumer AI agents versus enterprise 27:30 Technology adoption curve explained 30:00 Defining what an agent is 32:38 The decade of AI agents 36:35 GPT-5 as thinking model 39:38 AI economics, losses, and upside