Aaron Levie, CEO of Box, publishes a strategic essay on the fundamental transformation of software in a world where AI agents become the primary users of every application. He observes that since late 2025, agents have crossed a decisive threshold: they now have their own sandboxed compute environment, can write and execute code, interact with APIs and CLIs, and manage their own files and long-term memory.
This architecture, initially defined by coding agents (Claude Code, Devin, Codex, Cursor, Replit), has extended to all knowledge work with agents such as Claude Cowork, Perplexity Computer, Manus and OpenClaw, the latter running 24/7 in a persistent environment. Levie predicts that every employee will have numerous agents, with 100 to 1000 times more agents than people within a company, amounting to trillions of agents globally.
Adapting Paul Graham's famous advice ("Make something people want"), Levie proposes a new paradigm: "Make something agents want". Agents will themselves choose the most suitable tools, without being influenced by traditional marketing. The major consequence: everything must become API-first. Without an API, a feature does not exist for agents. CLIs and MCP servers become indispensable. Levie cites Jared Friedman of YC, who warns that tools that do not allow sign-up via API are "dead to agents".
Business models must also evolve: the per-seat model no longer suffices when an agent can accomplish hours of human work in a few lines of text. Models based on consumption and volume will be needed, potentially even allowing agents to manage their own payments.
Levie then describes the infrastructure ecosystem required: sandbox environments (E2B, Daytona, Modal, Cloudflare), file management (Box), identity and email for agents (Agentmail), web search (Parallel, Exa), payments (Stripe, Coinbase), and potentially microtransactions. Security, compliance and governance become major issues when agents handle sensitive data in regulated workflows (pharma, banking). Agents will need their own identities with strict controls over their actions and data access.
In conclusion, Levie states that we are entering a new era of software in which tools must be designed specifically for agents operating at an unprecedented scale.