Inside Alts: Vista Equity Partners CEO outlines the next phase of the AI boom

Watch on YouTube ↗  |  January 06, 2026 at 14:00  |  22:47  |  CNBC
Speakers
Robert Smith — Founder, Chairman and CEO, Vista Equity Partners

Summary

CNBC Wealth Editor Robert Frank interviews Vista Equity Partners founder, chairman and CEO Robert Smith about the next phase of AI, private equity, and enterprise software. Smith argues the AI opportunity is shifting from hardware and hyperscalers to application providers, especially agentic enterprise software that can capture long-term economic rent. He highlights Vista's agentic factory, proprietary workflow/data advantages, and the cost and margin benefits of GenAI. Smith also discusses private equity returns, high-net-worth investor demand, and the employment impact of AI.

  • Robert Smith says private equity value creators can still return capital at historically comparable rates.
  • He describes a three-leg AI cycle: hardware, hyperscalers, then application providers.
  • Enterprise software valuations have fallen, creating a buying opportunity for agentic transformation.
  • Agentic enterprise software can eat services and drive hyperaccelerated growth.
  • GenAI can lift software productivity and nearly double margins under the rule of 70.
  • Companies with proprietary workflows and data should capture AI economic rent.
  • Companies reselling public data or content risk being eaten by AI.
  • Smith also discusses Nvidia's unique hardware position, Google's integrated stack, and Vista's agentic factory.
Ideas
Robert Smith Founder, Chairman and CEO, Vista Equity Partners 1:06
Value creators still deliver private equity returns.
Smith argues that despite a challenging couple of years for private equity, firms that can fundamentally create value in companies can continue returning capital at historically comparable rates. Public-market AI enthusiasm has pulled investors into Mag 7-type companies, but value-creating private equity should remain competitive.
PSP MED
Robert Smith Founder, Chairman and CEO, Vista Equity Partners 1:53
Enterprise software valuations offer attractive buying opportunity.
The second great enterprise software category is the rule of 70. Applying GenAI across product development, go-to-market, services, and back office can deliver 30-50% productivity gains in new code, lower customer acquisition and service costs, and nearly double margins for existing enterprise software companies.
IGV HIGH
Robert Smith Founder, Chairman and CEO, Vista Equity Partners 2:20
Application providers capture AI's long-term economic rent.
Smith describes a three-leg AI journey: hardware vendors first, hyperscalers second, and application providers third. Application providers that use generative AI in enterprise workflows should capture the lion's share of long-term economic rent, and most such companies are private today.
AI-SECTOR HIGH
Robert Smith Founder, Chairman and CEO, Vista Equity Partners 3:48
Nvidia has unique AI hardware position.
Nvidia has a unique position among AI hardware vendors in the first leg of the AI buildout, though Smith cautions that hardware ultimately provides a utility and long-term economic rent favors application providers.
NVDA MED
Robert Smith Founder, Chairman and CEO, Vista Equity Partners 4:05
Google's integrated stack offers investment opportunity.
Google's latest announcement created market stir and it has a fully integrated AI stack, which Smith sees as a great opportunity to invest in some respects, though he still views infrastructure providers as utilities versus application-layer rent capture.
GOOG LOW
Robert Smith Founder, Chairman and CEO, Vista Equity Partners 5:14
Agentic software eats services, driving hypergrowth.
In enterprise software, the first great category is companies that can become agentic: agents perform workflow tasks at higher frequency and precision than humans using tools. This allows enterprise software to eat services and creates hyperaccelerated growth.
Agentic enterprise software HIGH
Robert Smith Founder, Chairman and CEO, Vista Equity Partners 7:59
Proprietary data and workflows capture AI rent.
Companies with sovereignty and dominion over proprietary workflows and data sets can deliver unique agentic solutions and capture economic rent. Less than 1% of enterprise data has been used to train foundation models, so these proprietary moats remain valuable.
Enterprise software with proprietary workflows and data HIGH
Robert Smith Founder, Chairman and CEO, Vista Equity Partners 8:10
Public-data resellers will be eaten by AI.
Companies that merely repurpose and resell publicly available data and information will be eaten by AI. They lack proprietary workflows or data and cannot defend against agentic competition.
AI content resellers HIGH
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This CNBC video, published January 06, 2026, features Robert Smith discussing PSP, IGV, AI-SECTOR, NVDA, GOOG, Agentic enterprise software, Enterprise software with proprietary workflows and data, AI content resellers. 8 trade ideas extracted by AI with direction and confidence scoring.

Speakers: Robert Smith  · Tickers: PSP, IGV, AI-SECTOR, NVDA, GOOG, Agentic enterprise software, Enterprise software with proprietary workflows and data, AI content resellers