Day 500 of the Agent Era: What's Disappearing, What's Being Born, and Why We Should Stop Investing in GUI-Thinking Software

This is a crossover podcast episode between ZhenFund's "Seriously Speaking" (此话当真) and Crossing.

Last year, ZhenFund managing partner Yusen Dai's New Year conversation with Koji proposed that 2025 would be the Year of the Agent. Now, 500 days have passed since that episode.

Around Day 100, Claude 3.5 Sonnet provided a more solid capability foundation for agents, and Manus went viral shortly after. At Day 300, Claude Code dominated the conversation. Now at Day 500, new concepts around agents continue to emerge.

This episode also grew out of an article previously written by ZhenFund investment director Jack Zhong: "Perhaps We Should Stop Investing in GUI-Minded Software Companies." We attempt to trace a through-line across the past 500 days of change: GUI exits stage left → Headless rises → CLI revival → Skills encapsulation → the budding Agentic Economy.

Against this backdrop, we invited Koji, Jack, and Guizang to discuss where agents stand after 500 days — software, workflows, and...

View the full episode description on Xiaoyuzhou View the episode transcript on Xiaoyuzhou