BPO, IT industry to disappear because of AI? Billionaire Vinod Khosla makes big prediction on Nikhil Kamath's podcast

While speaking on Zerodha co-founder Nikhil Kamath's podcast People by WTF, Indian-origin billionaire and venture capitalist warned that the recent surge in AI could potentially wipe out the BPO and IT industries in India—unless they undergo a major transformation to adapt and stay relevant.

When asked about whether India’s IT Sector would be able to survive the AI shift, Khosla said, ""I think, it's very—you know, BPO as a business will disappear."

"Software IT services will mostly disappear. Disappear means transform pretty radically. Whether some of those companies can transform or not will determine whether they survive or not," added Khosla.


"Here's the problem, right? If I can do a system integration service for one-fifth the cost, the customer will always take one-fifth—modulo trust. So, will some of these vendors drop their prices by 5X, or 80 percent, or at least by 60 percent, and then expand their services?" said the billionaire.

Is college education dead?

In an age where artificial intelligence is rapidly reshaping how we work, learn, and live, American billionaire and Silicon Valley veteran Vinod Khosla has issued what might be the most radical take on higher education to date: “College is dead.”

Khosla's thesis is clear, provocative, and packed with implications: "If every child in India has a free AI tutor, something entirely possible today, it would be better than the best education a rich person can buy." That single line challenges the very foundation of elitism in global education.

Khosla’s argument rests on a transformative idea: the highest quality education is no longer exclusive to the wealthy. Through AI, it can be compressed, scaled, and made universally accessible. Pointing to CK-12—the nonprofit ed-tech platform co-founded by his wife Neeru Khosla—he explained how AI-powered, adaptive tutoring has the potential to replace the traditional, teacher-led classroom model.

"You don’t have to go back to college for three or five years to switch from electrical engineering to mechanical engineering, or from medicine to something else," he said during the podcast, questioning the rigidity of degree-based specialization. In his vision, AI enables continuous, borderless, self-paced learning.

This shift, Khosla argues, isn’t incremental—it’s seismic. AI tutors can surpass even elite human educators in personalization, accessibility, and subject mastery. And with that, the longstanding monopoly of universities over skill validation and credentialing faces a deep and urgent challenge.