Agentic artificial intelligence (AI) is constantly evolving, according to Robert F. Smith, chairman of Vista Equity Partners LLC.

At the “AI and the Future of Investment” session of the 26th World Knowledge Forum (WKF) held in Seoul on Wednesday, Smith noted that introducing new agentic AI technologies, teams, and infrastructure into its portfolio companies to enhance competitiveness and profitability has become its core value-up strategy.

Vista, alongside Thoma Bravo and Silver Lake, is regarded as one of the world’s top three private equity (PE) firms in the technology sector, managing assets of around $100 billion.

Smith stressed that it is time to focus on agentic AI, moving beyond traditional software companies or generative AI investments.

He explained that profitability can be maximized and successful exit strategies crafted by applying agentic AI to existing investments in software-as-a-service (SaaS) and AI companies.

Agentic AI refers to intelligent systems that go beyond chatbots or virtual assistants answering questions; they observe and reason about customer behavior, and proactively make decisions and execute actions.

Smith noted that enterprise-level agentic systems are not easy to design, but once developed, customer utility increases explosively.

He added that Vista is investing to build the capability to develop such enterprise solutions.

Smith said that his firm is also embedding agentic AI into its existing software portfolio while pursuing acquisitions of companies with relevant technologies.

According to the chairman, Vista has already partnered with AI startups OpenAI and Anthropic and is building related infrastructure.

He said that when enterprises shifted from on-premise IT infrastructure to the cloud, customer utility rose 2.5 times. With the adoption of agentic AI solutions, performance will improve more than tenfold compared to the past, he added.