Re-Founding Incumbents for the AI Era with Sequence Holdings Co-Founder and CEO Michael Lee
Sep 24, 2026 · 42:45
Sequence Holdings CEO Michael Lee tells Sarah Guo why incumbents, not startups, should lead AI transformation, and explains the $7.7 billion take-private of insurance broker Baldwin with the Dell Family Office. Lee argues enterprises can't recruit frontier engineering talent, can't trust incrementalist vendors, and can't buy software that hardens today's workflows—so Sequence buys incumbents and refounds them, one deal per year. He describes Atlas, Sequence's reusable platform of data ontology, agent building, and orchestration, and why brokerage economics resist startups. At BankSouth, underwriting time fell 94% in six months and loan closings dropped from 30 days to 11, letting volumes double. Lee closes with lessons from Apollo and Lone Pine: back exceptional people in big markets.
