Robert F. Smith pleads with businesses: “Don’t destroy your intern program”

Robert F. Smith, CEO and chairman of Vista Equity Partners, made a blunt plea in Aspen: “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.” He didn’t say internships are optional while AI reshapes work. He tied them directly to the future of who gets to participate in the next tech era.

At Fortune's Brainstorm Tech, Smith framed AI as an unavoidable disruption to jobs, then argued internships are the practical way companies manage that disruption without severing the pipeline that builds the next generation of technologists. The logic is plain even if the stakes are large: each new era of technology builds on the previous one, and companies need younger people inside the process to transfer skills and keep “optimism” in the system.

This matters because the AI transition is not a hypothetical in the C-suite anymore. Smith acknowledged that AI is delivering “massive disruption to the workforce,” and then walked through the labor-economic reality: “Agents are workers, workers do tasks, some of those tasks get aggregated into jobs.” He also said there will be “massive impact on jobs,” with some arguing it is job loss, others arguing expansion, and that there will be “some mix” until different states of equilibrium. In other words, even if headlines debate whether AI kills or creates work, the company-level problem remains the same: what will you do with your workforce planning, and how will you keep your talent engine running?

Intern programs sit at the intersection of those two problems. Smith’s argument is not only that internships transfer knowledge. He said internships create “a new group of technologists and thinkers who can carry this world.” That is a long-term bet, but it is also operational. Internships are how firms identify young talent before they become fully formed candidates. They are also how organizations turn the abstract idea of AI readiness into something concrete: mentorship, hands-on exposure, and real work that leads to real capability.

Smith’s own origin story is doing heavy lifting here. The article describes how, as a high school student in Denver, he “pestered Bell Labs for months,” asking to join an internship program reserved for college juniors and seniors. Bell Labs ultimately agreed, and Smith then developed a reliability test for semiconductors during his time there. The company was impressed, inviting him back during summer breaks from Cornell University. Smith later built a career betting on software’s growth. Vista Equity Partners, the tech-focused private equity firm he founded in 2000, now oversees a portfolio of roughly 90 software companies, including Cloud Software Group, Avalara, and Infoblox. The point is not nostalgia. It is that early access to technical work can compound into a career that shapes capital allocation and product strategy later.

If you are sitting on a board or running a company, this becomes a question of incentives and timing. During periods of technological uncertainty, organizations often respond by cutting programs that are easy to frame as “non-core.” Internships can get bundled into the same bucket as discretionary hiring. Smith’s counter is to treat internships as part of the company’s adaptation mechanism, not a casualty of adaptation. His statement essentially redefines the cost-benefit math: even if AI changes the nature of tasks, the need to recruit, train, and socialize new talent does not disappear. It might even intensify as skills evolve faster.

There is also a governance angle. Smith is CEO and chairman of Vista, which gives him a platform to talk to both founders and investors at a major tech conference like Fortune Brainstorm Tech. His remarks were presented in a discussion with Fortune's Allie Garfinkle, where he also discussed Vista’s approach to investing in AI, including what companies deserve to exist in the coming era. That matters because private equity and growth capital influence which operating practices get funded, which companies get scaled, and which labor strategies become industry norms. If major investors treat workforce development programs as optional, portfolio companies will feel the drift. If leaders insist on keeping internships intact, that becomes a capital preference that can ripple across sectors.

Smith’s broader framing of tech evolution also acts like a sanity check for the “AI changes everything” narrative. He said he was inclined to choose the transistor when his kids asked what the most profound tech development in human history was, but that younger people would likely choose AI because it is the most important tech to emerge in their lifetimes. He used that generational contrast to reinforce his thesis: continuity matters. The industry does not only move forward; it builds on earlier building blocks. Internships are one of the most direct ways companies make sure the next generation inherits the tools, context, and curiosity that earlier eras created.

And for peers who manage software portfolios, advise founders, or oversee HR and talent pipelines, the message is sharp: AI might change jobs, but the company-level responsibility to bring younger people into the workforce still stands. Smith’s plea is not a denial of disruption. It is a directive for how to respond to disruption without breaking the human chain that turns new technology into new capabilities.