Voice AI has been an incredible, I think, enabling innovation in the last few years where you can now actually talk to an AI agent on the other line.

You may not even know that it's not a human because their conversational abilities and their intonation sounds very human-like.

Business process outsourcing. Ever heard of it? Well, you may not have heard of the acronym,

but you almost certainly have heard of some of the companies operating in this space,

whether it's cognizant, emphasis, Accenture,

companies that help other companies offload repetitive, labor-intensive tasks.

This industry is massive, valued at over $300 billion today and expected to exceed

$525 billion by 2030. But this industry, one with its origins in manufacturing, is ready again

for disruption. Because AI is rewriting the BPO script. We're instead about sourcing work to humans in lower cost regions, businesses are now

automating entire workflows, replacing the need for traditional BPO services.

This is already happening in the front office for needs like customer support, but also the

back office, from internal ops, finance and accounting, IT, HR, and even legal.

Plus, we're seeing all kinds of verticalized solutions from logistics to health care.

So in today's episode, together with A16Z partner Kimberly Tan, we break down exactly how

AI is unbundling the BPO market, where new capabilities like browser or voice agents

come into play,

how startups can compete against massive legacy incumbents, and a whole lot more.

This episode was also inspired by an article that Kimberly wrote called Unbundling the BPO,

how AI will disrupt outsource work, and of course we'll include a link to that in the show notes.

Let's get started.

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