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Orlando Bravo, co-founder of Thoma Bravo, during the Bloomberg House event in Miami, Florida, US, on Thursday, April 30, 2026. Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Thoma Bravo's billionaire founder says AI will transform junior workers' roles by eliminating grunt work, despite growing concerns about the technology's impact on entry-level roles. Orlando Bravo, the founder of software-focused private equity firm Thoma Bravo, discussed how the role of junior associates is changing as the company increasingly utilizes AI, in a conversation with CNBC's Annette Weisbach at the SuperReturn conference in Berlin on Tuesday. The jobs of junior associates will become greater, and they'll "mature a lot quicker," Bravo said. "They're spending a lot less time doing models or comparables than before...overall, now they really get into investing operations and a much bigger way of thinking about business."
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"I bother them a lot less, because at midnight I can do something really quickly with AI instead of [comparables], instead of calling them to do it in the middle of the night, which improves their life anyway, which is what they want," he added. The comments come amid growing concerns about youth unemployment, with recent data showing the number of young people not in education, employment or training in the U.K. increased to over a million in the first four months of the year. Young people are facing an increasingly competitive job market in the U.S. and U.K. as companies lay off thousands of workers and deploy AI, resulting in a shrinking of entry-level jobs. "For young people, AI is going to be amazing, and I'm very, very upset that some people say that it'll destroy entry-level jobs," Bravo said. "If you define the role of an associate as just doing a spreadsheet, you don't need that, but our associates are now calling on companies a lot more. They're developing relationships with CEOs, and we need a lot more of them." Bravo explained that it's the first time in his 30-year career in private equity where he has needed to hire more, as AI creates more work.
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