Box just dropped a major play in the enterprise AI race, unveiling Box Automate - an operating system for AI agents that could reshape how companies handle unstructured data. CEO Aaron Levie announced the platform at Boxworks 2025, positioning the cloud storage giant as a safer alternative to foundation model companies rushing to capture enterprise workflows.
Box CEO Aaron Levie has been watching the AI wars unfold with a particular kind of confidence. While foundation model companies race to build bigger, more powerful systems, Levie's betting on something different - context and control.
At Thursday's Boxworks conference, Box unveiled Box Automate, what the company describes as an operating system for AI agents in enterprise environments. It's the latest salvo in Box's aggressive AI push that started with their AI Studio last year, followed by data-extraction agents in February and search capabilities in May.
The timing isn't coincidental. Just this week, Anthropic rolled out direct file uploads to Claude.ai, creeping closer to Box's enterprise territory. But Levie sees an opening where others see competition.
"We're in the era of context within AI," Levie told TechCrunch in an exclusive interview. "What AI models and agents need is context, and the context that they need to work off is sitting inside your unstructured data."
Box Automate tackles what Levie calls the automation gap - the vast majority of enterprise workflows that touch unstructured data. While companies have automated structured database operations through CRM and ERP systems for years, documents, contracts, and marketing assets have remained stubbornly manual.
"Think about any kind of legal review process, any kind of marketing asset management process, any kind of M&A deal review," Levie explained. "We've never been able to bring much automation to those workflows because computers just haven't been good enough at reading a document."
The platform's key innovation lies in workflow segmentation. Rather than deploying one massive AI agent to handle entire business processes, Box Automate breaks tasks into discrete chunks with specific handoff points. A submission agent might handle initial document intake, then pass work to a separate review agent, each operating within defined parameters.
