Acquire CEO: Most BPO AI Platforms Won’t Be Around in Three Years

Artificial intelligence is reshaping the business process outsourcing industry at a noticeable pace, but most of today’s AI platforms likely won’t survive the next few years, according to Acquire Intelligence CEO Scott Stavretis.

“I think most platforms out there now will not be in existence in three years’ time,” Stavretis said. “Most of them are built on LLMs (large language models) — still on the core three or four LLMs. Most of them are wrappers with a little bit of tech stack thrown in there. They’re only as good as the LLMs are.”

Just hours after his interview with Nearshore Americas, Stavretis announced Acquire BPO would be merging with its sister company, Acquire.AI, under a single umbrella and rebranding the company as Acquire Intelligence.

The move underscores a growing divide in the BPO space: while some firms are developing and promoting proprietary AI tools, Acquire is taking a different path. Stavretis said companies trying to build all-purpose AI systems risk being overtaken by hyperscalers like Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI — firms that are creating the core models themselves and could render niche BPO platforms obsolete overnight.

“If you’re trying to create the next AI version of Salesforce or something that everyone’s going to plug into, I just don’t think it’s going to happen at all,” Stavretis said. “They’re not going to be able to compete from a funding perspective… and they’re not going to be able to go deep enough into specific niches.”

Instead, Acquire has taken a “tech-agnostic” approach. The company’s transformation strategy focuses on helping clients streamline processes using the tools that are best suited — rather than forcing the adoption of in-house platforms.

“We take that approach of eliminate, automate and then relocate,” Stavretis said. “Eliminate their wasted processes … automate through AI in an agnostic way … and then look to where’s the best place for those remaining processes.”

Nearshoring Success in DR

Founded in 2005 in Melbourne, Australia, Acquire has grown to more than 9,500 employees across 15 locations, with delivery centers in the Philippines and Dominican Republic supporting clients in Australia and the United States. Stravetis, an Australian native, said the company’s U.S. presence has expanded sharply since opening a Dallas office and nearshore operations in the Dominican Republic nearly a decade ago.

Stavretis said the original intent behind the Dominican Republic center was to serve U.S. clients with Spanish-speaking needs. But over time, its strategic importance has grown — even for English-language accounts.

“We originally opened in the Dominican Republic solely for Spanish-speaking (services) to the U.S. market,” Stavretis said. “However … today, there’s a lot of clients that do value that nearshore approach. They may not have any Spanish requirements, and still we’re putting them (in) the Dominican Republic.”

He said the trend is driven by factors ranging from past dissatisfaction with offshore providers to the desire for closer proximity, faster travel, and increased involvement in training and oversight.

“As the roles become more sophisticated … clients want to be involved in a larger way,” Stavretis said. “They want to be more hands-on, they want to be involved in the training and a bit of touch and feel and be more immersed for the team.”

The Dominican Republic continues to be one of the region’s most mature and competitive nearshore delivery locations, with a bilingual workforce and strong telecom infrastructure supporting its appeal to U.S. firms.

“What we do is similar sort of numbers — about 55% is CX work and 45% would be typical back-office type roles,” Stavretis said. “At one stage (the business) was 100% Australian … now the U.S. is larger than the Australian business.”

CX dodging AI staffing woes for now

Stavretis said AI’s most significant impact to date has been in traditional white-collar functions — legal research, HR, compliance, and finance — rather than in CX.

“Everyone thought that CX would be the number one element (affected by AI),” he said. “That’s certainly not the case. CX, sales, retention … still needs empathy, still needs human decision-making.”

Even as automated systems improve, he said, “There’s still a very big part of the market that tends to move pretty slow when these technology revolutions come about.”

Stavretis believes the days of BPO firms thriving solely on labor arbitrage are coming to a close. Increased market pressure, client cost-cutting and fears about AI are already forcing change.

“A lot of companies for a long time have just been extremely fat,” he said. “Staffing levels across the whole industry … have been under a lot of pressure. But I think that’s still a myth that it’s so much focused on AI.”

Instead, he sees more value in playing the long game — helping clients rethink how they operate and engaging to solve business problems, not just providing headcount.

“There’s no experts in this area. There’s leaders and people that are moving forward, but the change is just so rapid,” he said. “It’s quite exciting. … Every day we wake up and see something new.”