Nothing CEO Carl Pei at SXSW: 'Apps Are Going to Disappear — AI Agents Will Take Their Place'

Carl Pei, co-founder and CEO of Nothing, paints a provocative picture of the future smartphone: no app icons, no app store — just an AI agent that knows you better than you know yourself.

Apps Are Doomed

"I think people should understand that apps are going to disappear," Pei said during an interview at the SXSW conference in Austin. "If you're a founder or a startup and your app is where the core value lies, that will be disrupted whether you like it or not."

Pei is not the first to predict the death of apps, but the Nothing CEO combines vision with concrete product plans and $200 million in Series C funding from last year, earmarked precisely for an AI-first device.

Three Steps Toward the AI Phone

Pei outlines a three-stage evolution:

Step 1 – Command Execution: AI does what you ask — booking flights or hotels. Pei calls this "super boring" — it's already here.

Step 2 – Intent Understanding: AI learns your long-term goals and nudges you toward them. Want to be healthier? The phone proactively helps you get there.

Step 3 – Proactive Anticipation: AI suggests things you didn't even know you wanted. "When the system knows us so well, it will come up with things that we don't even know we wanted."

'iPhone UX Is Pre-iPhone'

Pei is sharp in his critique of today's smartphone UX: "The current way we use phones is very old-school. It's pre-iPhone. There used to be Palm Pilots and PDAs. And if you think about the user experience, it's still very similar. Lock screens, home screens, apps. It hasn't really changed for 20 years."

His example: grabbing coffee with someone requires four separate apps — a messaging app, maps, Uber, and a calendar. An AI agent should handle the entire flow.

What This Means for CIOs

Pei's vision is not science fiction — it's the logical extension of what's already happening with AI agents in enterprise. For CIOs, this means:

• App strategy should be reconsidered: Enterprise apps may be supplemented or replaced by agents that operate across systems
• Intent-driven interfaces are the next UX paradigm — not forms and menus, but natural language and context
• API-first is no longer just best practice — it's survival strategy when agents need to integrate with your systems

Nothing is a consumer-focused company, but the thinking is universal. The question isn't whether apps disappear — it's how fast.