Replit's CEO thinks AI will end soul-crushing corporate work — and bring entrepreneurship inside big companies

If you’ve ever sat in a meeting wondering how work became so… small, you’re not alone. According to Replit CEO Amjad Masad, that quiet frustration is baked into how modern companies operate. And he thinks AI might finally loosen it.

In a recent Business Insider piece, Masad talks about how corporate jobs often turn people into narrow specialists, stuck waiting on approvals while their best ideas collect dust. He described it as deeply alienating, and honestly, that word lands. Many of us have felt it. You spot a problem, you even know how to fix it, but the process smothers the spark before it goes anywhere.

Masad’s vision is different. He believes AI agents can handle the repetitive stuff, documentation, internal tools, basic workflows, so humans can do what they’re actually good at. Thinking. Building. Connecting dots. Not in some abstract future either. It’s already happening.

One example he shared really sticks. An employee at a large real estate marketplace had an idea to improve how buyers were routed to agents. No engineering resources were available, so in the old world, that would’ve been the end of it. Instead, the employee used Replit’s AI-powered coding tools to build and deploy a working solution himself. The result brought in tens of millions of dollars, possibly more, and completely changed that person’s career trajectory. Promotions followed. A seat at the table followed. Meaning followed.

What Masad is really pointing to is entrepreneurship inside big companies. Domain experts, not just engineers, turning insight into action. That’s a big shift. Other leaders see it too, from OpenAI to Microsoft to McKinsey, all experimenting with AI agents alongside human teams.

The full article is worth your time, especially if you’ve ever felt boxed in at work. You can read it here:
https://www.businessinsider.com/replit-ceo-says-ai-could-end-soul-crushing-corporate-work-2026-2

There’s something quietly hopeful in Masad’s take. If AI removes drudgery instead of judgment, work could feel human again. More ownership. More creativity. More moments where you can point at something and say, I built that. And that’s a future many of us are ready for.