Mark Ren, who led ChipNeMo, an early large language model for chip design created at Nvidia, has founded Agentrys, an applied research company. Ren argues that adopting frontier AI alone may not create a lasting advantage in the semiconductor industry. He states, "If AI is just another productivity tool everyone buys off the shelf, it raises the floor for the whole industry but gives no one an edge." While modern AI models can generate RTL and testbenches, write assertions, analyze logs, and assist with debug, every chipmaker can license the same capability. Ren's answer is that lasting advantage comes from an engineering capability competitors cannot rent: the customer-specific combination of workflow knowledge, continuous learning, and accumulated operating experience, enabled by Agentrys's platform and agent-native tools. He distinguishes between automating individual tasks and supporting broader engineering workflows, such as verification, physical implementation, timing closure, analog layout, and signoff, which involve multiple tools, engineers, and decisions. Agentrys's thesis is that workflow automation requires an execution layer built for autonomous systems, including tools that expose design state, support controlled machine actions, preserve traceability, and return structured, verifiable feedback.