How Cloud Pioneer Box Is Evolving With AI

Good morning. Box CEO Aaron Levie says AI is forcing the company to stretch beyond its original role as a content management platform. The software-as-a-service pioneer is pursuing a future based on helping customers do something similar as they adapt to the pressures of AI.

The company is taking on a more consultative mission. Having re-engineered its own business processes around AI, it’s looking to help customers do the same, according to Levie, who co-founded the company as a college student in 2005.

“Maybe 10 years ago, we would be talking to a bank about ‘how do you store your files? How do you secure that data?’ The infrastructure … would be the main part of the conversation,” Levie told me. “Now, we’re actually talking about the process itself…what are you looking to streamline? What decisions could you make better? … We have to get really, really close to the business and the process,” Levie said.

We spoke last week just before the company reported its second quarter results, including record revenue of $321.1 million, up 9% on a year-over-year basis. Box said it increased full-year revenue expectations for fiscal 2027 by $10 million to approximately $1.29 billion, up 10% year-over-year.

Shares are trading this morning around $35.58, just below their year-to-date high of $36.34.

Box was one of the pioneers of software-as-a-service, an area that has been under intense pressure from the rise of AI, especially earlier in the year. Given the growing power of AI, it’s conceivable customers can spin up their own software systems. While that may be easier said than done, the fact it’s even a possibility has created an existential moment for SaaS. Survival and growth have required a new purpose and mission and a deeper relationship with the customer.

“You have to be embedded in the organization … in those lines of business in each industry, if you’re going to have any real shot of driving automation,” Levie said.

Has the pressure of AI forced your company to rethink its mission? Let us know how that’s going. Send your feedback to me at steven.rosenbush@wsj.com (if you’re reading this in your inbox, you can just hit reply).

Gartner forecasts global semiconductor revenue will hit $1.6 trillion in 2026, up 92% from $809 billion in 2025, and reach $1.9 trillion in 2027. Behind the surge: Ongoing AI infrastructure investment and, with it, stronger-than-expected memory pricing cycle.

The AI data center ecosystem is expected to grow from 36.5% of semiconductor revenue in 2026 to over 53% by 2030, according to the research and advisory firm.

Memory is the big growth driver, forecast to reach $837 billion in 2026 and surpass $1 trillion in 2027.

“AI infrastructure has fundamentally changed the dynamics of the memory market,” said Shrish Pant, director analyst at Gartner, in a release. “While pricing expansion is accelerating growth in 2026, continued AI infrastructure deployments, higher memory content per AI server and sustained demand for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) will support memory revenue growth through 2027 and beyond.”

Revenue from non-memory semiconductors is also benefiting from the AI build-out. Gartner says the segment is projected to grow to $718 billion in 2026, hitting $864 billion in 2027.

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Follow Isabelle Bousquette on LinkedIn, Instagram, X, and TikTok for more behind the scenes on her tech and AI coverage, and lately, her contributions to the WSJ Leadership Institute’s new Executive Resilience series, where she’s profiling America’s top execs about their fitness and wellness habits.

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Steven Rosenbush is chief of the enterprise technology bureau at the WSJ Leadership Institute. He also has a column. You can follow him on LinkedIn.

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