1990s
Levie says earlier online-storage companies had died off in the late 1990s before Box launched.
“there had been companies that would let you store your data on the internet, but they all kind of died off in the late nineties”
Topic
Box
43 facts from 8 episodes, in date order. These are what speakers said on the shows, each linked to the moment it was said. They aren't independently verified.
2000s
Box pivoted into the enterprise market a couple of years after it started.
“once we pivoted into the enterprise market, which we did relatively early on, a couple years into into the business”
2000s
Levie says many banks, pharmaceutical firms and governments initially wanted on-premises software rather than a cloud version.
“there were a lot of enterprises, especially in banks, pharma companies, governments, that didn't want to have a cloud version of technology.”
2004
Aaron Levie was an intern at Paramount in 2004, the year he began the college project that became Box.
“got some internships in the entertainment industry, and then I was an intern at Paramount in 2004.”
2005
Box launched its online storage product in early 2005.
“we launched it in early 2005 and then just sort of started growing from there”
2005
Mark Cuban became involved with Box between Levie's sophomore and junior years of college, when Box was about four months old.
“between our sophomore and junior year of college. Box had been around for about four months or so.”
2005
Levie says Mark Cuban advised Box not to hedge its bets between competing business and technical approaches.
“he basically said, you know, as a startup, just don't hedge your bets.”
2005
Cuban's investment led Levie and his co-founder to drop out of college and work on Box full time.
“That led to actually us dropping out of college and betting on the company full time and pursuing it full time.”
2016
Levie says Box tried a similar AI question-answering project about six years before ChatGPT but it could not work without very large models.
“like six years prior, we actually had a project to attempt that. It just was never gonna work because until you had, like, 200, 300 billion parameter model”
2020s
Levie says Box offers agents that go through customers' contracts, invoices and other documents and extract structured data from them.
“give us your contracts, your invoices, your healthcare documents, your research files. And we have agents that go through all of that data and extract all of the structured data from that.”
2020s
Levie expects Box to charge a predictable per-user price of roughly $10 to $30 a month, with agent usage priced on top.
“There's gonna be seats for the user that will be a predictable price point, $10 a month, $20 a month, $30 a month, whatever the plan is that you're on.”
2020s
Levie says Box is comfortable with customers using agents in ChatGPT or Harvey to work on data stored in Box.
“If you never logged into Box, but you used an agent to interact with that data inside of ChatGPT or Harvey or somewhere else, we're totally comfortable.”
2020s
Levie says Box would spend about 5% of an engineer's salary on AI because it could make the engineer two to three times more productive.
“would we be fine to spend 5% of an engineer's salary on the equivalent of AI? Absolutely, because it's gonna make that engineer two times more productive, three times more productive.”
2020s
Levie says Box, Salesforce, ServiceNow and Workday are incumbents that could pivot successfully to agents in their existing categories.
“We're betting that we'll be one of those, and Salesforce is one, and ServiceNow is one, and Workday will be one for the its existing categories.”
2021
Box began building its Hubs product about a year before ChatGPT launched, to organize content topic by topic.
“We were building a product about a year before ChatGPT launched, which was it's now called hubs, and what it was was the ability to organize content on a topic by topic basis.”
2022
Levie says Box concluded within about ten days of ChatGPT's release that it should let users ask questions of their enterprise data.
“we realized it basically probably within ten days of ChatGPT”
2022
Box's generative AI effort began as a team of about ten to fifteen people.
“It started small. It was like a ten, f- fifteen person team”
2025
Aaron Levie says he had at least a hundred customer interactions about AI in the first quarter of the year the episode was recorded.
“From my anecdotes, I've had at least a hundred interactions with customers in in the first quarter of this year.”
2025
Aaron Levie estimates that about 80% of his customer AI conversations concerned work the companies did not do before AI.
“The vast majority, you know, 80%, I'm guessing, the bulk of the time of AI use case kind of, you know, conversation was spent on things that the company didn't do before AI.”
2026
Box counts 68% of the Fortune 500 as customers, according to the host.
“Aaron Levie is co-founder and CEO of Box, which counts 68% of the Fortune 500 as customers.”
2026
Aaron Levie says agentic coding could let engineering teams do three, five or ten times more work, and do it faster.
“you might be able to do it three or five or ten times faster.”
2026
Aaron Levie says Box tested Fable against Opus 4.8 on a project and that Fable did something Opus 4.8 could not.
“We we had a project just yesterday where we tested Fable versus Opus 4.8. And you'd you'd think, like, okay, these are should be on the same exact trajectory of of progress.”
2026
Aaron Levie says Box does not run an internal token leaderboard or incentivize maximum token use.
“we don't have a leaderboard internally, we don't try and incentivize the most number of tokens.”
Undated
Aaron Levie says Box stores well over 100 billion files.
“We store well over 100 billion files in Box, and you could imagine every single one of those has incredible insights and value inside of it.”
Undated
Box built a layer called Box AI that connects AI models to enterprise content while preserving the customer's security, privacy and permissions.
“we built a layer, uh, called Box AI, that connects AI models to enterprise content in a secure way that lets the enterprise continue to have their security”
Undated
Box is building AI that extracts structured data, such as a contract's renewal date and party names, from documents.
“take a contract and you want to be able to pull out, you know, the renewal date of the contract or the party names from the contract.”
Undated
Aaron Levie says Box plans to connect its content agents to other systems such as Salesforce, ServiceNow and Microsoft.
“So I want to connect it to Salesforce, I want to connect it to ServiceNow, I want to connect it to Microsoft.”
Undated
Box Hubs let one document appear in many hubs without moving it or changing its permissions, so an update propagates everywhere.
“I could have the same document show up in twenty different hubs without ever moving it, without ever changing the permissions on it.”
Undated
Aaron Levie says building the Hubs file architecture took about a year to a year and a half of deep architecture work.
“Because it was about a year, year and a half of just deep architecture work, like there was no way to build it any faster.”
Undated
Aaron Levie claims Box's Hubs-based retrieval service is at least a hundred times better than broad retrieval across all of a company's data.
“That has made our particular rag service, I think, you know, at least a hundred times better than just doing like broad based deployment across all your data.”
Undated
Aaron Levie describes the second era of enterprise software as systems of engagement, such as Slack and Box, which are less structured and more collaborative.
“Then we moved to systems of engagement, which was this idea of like collaborative systems, Slack and Box and other tools, where things are a lot less structured”
Undated
Aaron Levie says Box employees report AI coding tools make them roughly 5 to 10 percent more productive, and new hires up to 50 percent more productive.
“somebody will say, Hey, it was five or 10% more productive, maybe a new hire, it's 50% more productive because they can just ramp up so much faster.”
Undated
Box launched Box AI Studio to help organizations build their own custom AI agents, according to host Bob Safian.
“I know you launched Box AI Studio to help organizations build their own custom AI agents, and I'm curious how how that's going.”
Undated
Aaron Levie says that at Box, being AI first means using AI to speed up customer outcomes, decision making and feature building.
“So for us, AI first means that we want to use AI as a means of driving an acceleration of the customer outcome, an acceleration of decision making, an acceleration of building new features.”
Undated
Aaron Levie, who has worked in tech for twenty years since the start of the cloud, says AI is moving at least five to ten times faster than any earlier wave he has seen.
“Having done this now for twenty years, uh, starting right at the at the start of the cloud, seeing the iPhone, seeing the iPad, this is absolutely the fastest I've ever seen tech move by at least five to ten x.”
Undated
Aaron Levie says his political comments are his own views and not official positions of Box.
“These are not like the box official, like put our logo on it views. These are just Aaron's views about a thing.”
Undated
Box launched Box AI Studio, a product that helps organizations build their own custom AI agents.
“I know you launched Box AI Studio to help organizations build their own custom AI agents, and I'm curious how how that's going.”
Undated
Aaron Levie estimates he had at least 100 customer interactions in the first quarter of the year, with about 80% of AI discussions focused on work the company did not do before.
“I've had at least 100 interactions with customers in in the first quarter of this year. The vast majority, you know, 80%, I'm guessing”
Undated
Aaron Levie says Box's approach is the opposite of the Duolingo-style rule: teams that show they can use AI get additional headcount.
“If you can prove that you can use AI, then that's actually when you will get headcount.”
Undated
Todd Bishop says Box CEO Aaron Levy told him that AI has expanded what the company can attempt, so Levy puts in more time and energy rather than less.
“the horizons have just been expanded so much for him, for the company. There's so much more that can be done now with AI,”
Undated
Aaron Levie says forward-deployed engineers could come from vendors such as Box, Salesforce or Palantir, from systems integrators, or from new consulting firms.
“that Ford deployed engineer could come from a vendor like a Box or a Salesforce, or, um, or a Palantir, or it could come from a systems integrator or maybe a new consulting firm.”
Undated
Box CEO Aaron Levy told CXOTalk that venture capital has been subsidizing token use and that this is ending.
“he pointed out that we've been in this time when VCs have been effectively subsidizing our token use, and those days are coming to a close.”
Undated
Michael Krigsman says Aaron Levy, CEO of Box, said he can predict AI success from a company's technology stack.
“We recently had Aaron Levy, the CEO of Box, as a guest on CXOTalk, and he made the comment that he can predict AI success based on your technology stack.”
Episodes
- 25 Nov 2025Creating More, Not Less, With AI: GeekWire’s Todd Bishop23m
- 6 Aug 2026Why Your Enterprise AI Pilot Won't Scale (with Nate B. Jones)54m
- 17 Jul 2026The CIO Agenda for AI (with IBM Consulting)56m
- 15 Jun 2026Aaron Levie, Box CEO: Advice for CIOs on AI Agents53m
- 14 Jan 2026How SaaS can survive the AI revolution, with Aaron Levie43m
- 24 May 2025Rapid Response: The enterprise AI revolution is underway, with Box’s Aaron Levie36m
- 20 May 2025The enterprise AI revolution is underway, with Box’s Aaron Levie40m
- 29 Jan 2025Aaron Levie, CEO of Box, on Box AI, Enterprise Enthusiasm, and the Evolution of SaaS50m