Why Enterprise AI Now Has to Prove Its Return: A VC Investor Perspective
TechTarget, Tuesday, August 19th, 2025
Investor Ed Sim says enterprise AI has entered a third wave in which spending is judged by measured return.
Ed Sim, founder and general partner of boldstart ventures, tells CXOTalk that enterprise AI has moved into a third wave defined by ROI, triggered when token costs began compounding on easy work. He expects no single-vendor answer, arguing that control and cost push buyers toward model routing and open-weight models, and frames the choice as whether to rent intelligence or own it.
On security, Sim's concern is identity inheritance: agents should receive scoped access at runtime that expires when the task ends, containing the blast radius when one is compromised. He urges measuring cost per outcome before optimizing it, and argues that offense currently has the advantage while autonomous defense catches up.