Billionaire Robert F. Smith warns companies not to let AI wipe out their intern programs

Robert F. Smith, the billionaire founder of Vista Equity Partners and the wealthiest Black American, has urged business leaders not to dismantle internship programs even as companies increasingly turn to artificial intelligence to automate tasks once handled by entry-level workers.

Speaking at Fortune's Brainstorm Tech conference in Aspen, Colorado, Smith said AI will significantly reshape the labor market, but argued that organizations still carry a responsibility to keep developing young talent. "I would continue to encourage all of you and businesses that you operate and own to make sure you don't destroy your intern program," Smith said. "That's an important part of bringing people along and, honestly, of creating optimism and a new group of technologists and thinkers who can carry this world."

His comments land as companies across industries experiment with AI agents and automation tools capable of performing work historically assigned to junior staff. Smith did not dismiss the scale of disruption coming. "Agents are workers, workers do tasks, some of those tasks get aggregated into jobs, and there is going to be a massive impact on jobs, no question about it," he said. "Some may say it will be a big loss, some may say an expansion. There's going to be some mix till we reach different states of equilibrium."

The issue carries personal weight for Smith. As a teenager in Denver, he repeatedly called Bell Labs seeking an internship despite a programme that was technically reserved for college upperclassmen. His persistence eventually won him a spot, and during his time there he developed a semiconductor reliability test, returning for additional internships later while studying chemical engineering at Cornell University. That early break, gained through refusal to accept an initial no, set him on the path that would eventually lead to Goldman Sachs, an MBA at Columbia Business School, and the 2000 founding of Vista Equity Partners.

Vista has since grown into one of the largest technology-focused private equity firms in the world, with a software portfolio Forbes has valued at $107 billion and a stake in nearly 90 portfolio companies employing more than 100,000 people. Smith's fortune, built almost entirely through that firm, stands above $10 billion, making him the wealthiest Black person in the United States, a position he has held since overtaking Oprah Winfrey in 2018.

Smith's argument at Brainstorm Tech was not that companies should resist adopting AI, but that the technology's efficiency gains should not come at the cost of the entry points that let young people build careers in the first place. He framed internship pipelines as a structural investment in future talent rather than a discretionary cost center, a position that echoes his own origin story more directly than most executive commentary on AI and labor markets tends to.

The remarks add Smith's voice to a widening debate among corporate and financial leaders over how aggressively to deploy AI agents in place of junior staff, a debate playing out as automation tools mature quickly enough to handle increasingly complex entry-level tasks. Smith's position, that companies can adopt the technology while still protecting structured pathways into the workforce, reflects both his standing as one of the most prominent Black executives in American finance and the formative role a single internship opportunity played in his own rise from a working-class Denver household to the top of the private equity industry.