What CEOs Are Saying: The Latest on Agents and AI

Let's see what the leadership of Okta, Concentrix, and Klaviyo had to say last week.

Everyone in tech is talking about “agents,” AI programs that don’t just generate text and images but that actually go do complex tasks on their own.

If “generative AI” was basically supercharged autocomplete, “agentic AI” is about delegation. A good agent can go off and file tickets, send emails, update CRMs, and even make decisions without a human in the loop. And it can increasingly handle multiple steps across many different platforms and environments.

As cool as this sounds, for CEOs of companies in this space, the rise of agentic AI is causing problems. The big one is that interest across customers is highly variable, but investors want to see the payoff now.

The era of software as tools that you log into and we expect humans to use is over. —Andrew Bialecki

Last week gave us a useful snapshot of these dynamics. Concentrix, Okta, and Klaviyo, all in or adjacent to this space, each held major investor events. And each CEO had to balance the same question of where the AI hype ends and…