Prediction certainty 3/5 debate potential 3/5

Levie: AI tool makers will maintain flat pricing despite falling compute costs

Aaron Levie · Aaron Levie: Why Startups Win In The AI Era · Y Combinator · Sep 16, 2025 · at 25:42

Aaron Levie, CEO of Box, compares AI software pricing to cloud storage deflationary economics during a Y Combinator fireside chat.

0:00 / 0:13exact quote · 13.7s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“It's like, it's 20 bucks a month, it's 50 bucks a month, but we know that in 10 years from now, they'll probably be able to drive down their raw materials lower, but we won't be able to command lower prices for those things, because it's just like within a reasonable amount of spend.”

quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →

More from Aaron Levie

Prediction Not checkable as stated
Levie: In 10 years, most enterprise work will be previously uneconomic tasks
“If we go 10 years into the future, The vast majority of work that gets done in 10 years from now will be work that today is in that category. It's the work that like right now we can't even attack because we're like, I'm not going to hire somebody, pay them a …”
Aaron Levie Sep 16, 2025 ▶ 11:30 Aaron Levie: Why Startups Win In The AI Era · Y Combinator
Prediction Open · timeframe Sep 2030
Levie: 100 Startups Created Between 2024-2028 Will Reach $5B to $20B Valuations
“There will be 100 startups that get created between last year and in three years from now that all become five, 10, twenty billion dollar companies because they're able to find the next set of nouns and verbs”
Aaron Levie Sep 16, 2025 ▶ 18:44 Aaron Levie: Why Startups Win In The AI Era · Y Combinator
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Levie: Customers will pay for workflow software rather than raw tokens
“So eventually we're going to get to a point where customers are no longer going to just be paying for the intelligence tokens. They're going to be paying for the workflow software that goes on top of the tokens themselves.”
Aaron Levie Sep 16, 2025 ▶ 23:48 Aaron Levie: Why Startups Win In The AI Era · Y Combinator
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Levie: Incumbents will only sell AI agents to existing install bases
“Because I think incumbents are only going to be the agent providers for their existing install base, which means that there's going to be tons of opportunity for so many more agents that those incumbents aren't already selling into.”
Aaron Levie Sep 16, 2025 ▶ 40:03 Aaron Levie: Why Startups Win In The AI Era · Y Combinator
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Levie: Salesforce and Marc Benioff Will Successfully Implement AI for CRM
“It won't just be like, oh, it's CRM, but with AI, because Mark Benioff in Salesforce is going to do CRM with AI. Like he's going to figure out a way to do that. He's they're very good at executing like that will happen.”
Aaron Levie Sep 16, 2025 ▶ 18:08 Aaron Levie: Why Startups Win In The AI Era · Y Combinator
Insight
Levie: AI agents replace per-seat SaaS pricing with work volume pricing
“Agents basically completely blows that up because all of a sudden you can have AI agents that effectively contain the labor of that job function in the software itself. So you can go to a company and you can say, I know you only have three lawyers, but my agen…”
Aaron Levie Sep 16, 2025 ▶ 20:31 Aaron Levie: Why Startups Win In The AI Era · Y Combinator
Made with StarZero

Turn any episode into a week of clips.

This entire site, over 300 episodes transcribed, diarized, checked and made playable, runs on the StarZero media pipeline. Drop in your own episode and the podcast clipper finds the moments worth sharing, cuts them, captions them, and reframes them for every feed.