Exclusive: Inside Automation Anywhere’s boost.ai acquisition plans

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Kane Simms

Automation Anywhere has agreed to acquire boost.ai. What could that mean for customer experience, personal AI agents and the autonomous enterprise?

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About this episode

In this exclusive interview, we speak with Jerry Haywood, CEO of boost.ai, and Ankur Kothari, co-founder and COO of Automation Anywhere, about the proposed combination. They discuss how conversational and voice AI could connect to work across enterprise systems, where people remain involved and what customers need to prepare for.

The conversation covers the rationale behind the deal, customer and employee operations, the changing relationship between CX and IT, personal agents, agent-to-agent interactions and the foundations of successful AI adoption. I close with my view on why the combination matters.

Acquisition status: the companies announced a definitive agreement on 7 October 2026. Completion is expected in Q4 2026, subject to regulatory approvals and customary closing conditions.

Guest

Jerry Haywood

CEO at boost.ai

Jerry took the helm as Chief Executive Officer at boost.ai in November 2022. Before this, he served as the Senior Vice President for EMEA at LivePerson. His previous experience includes over eight years at Salesforce, where he was Area Vice President for Service Cloud in Europe. Jerry has also held leadership roles at BMC Software and Cisco.

Guest

Ankur Kothari

Co-Founder, Chief Operating Officer and Board Member at Automation Anywhere

Over more than two decades with Automation Anywhere, he has held a series of executive leadership roles, including Chief Revenue Officer and Chief Customer & Strategy Officer, playing a strategic role across engineering, product, operations, and customer-facing divisions.

Timestamps

0:00|Why Boost AI joined Automation Anywhere
4:13|Orchestrating work for autonomous customer operations
13:21|Market convergence: AI as the enterprise operating system
23:36|Preparing for personal agents and multimodal interactions
35:37|Key factors for enterprise AI adoption and success
46:49|AI orchestration: The future business operating system

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Kane Simms

A strategic AI advisor who, for the past decade, has helped business leaders and product owners transform customer experience using conversational and generative AI.

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