What does all of this mean for the 30 million software developers worldwide? Will AI replace software developers in the foreseeable future? Of course not. This nonsensical narrative is triggered by a mix of media sensationalism and aggressive marketing that attempts to price software not as per-seat, but as a replacement to human labor cost. History tells us that while substitution pricing works in early markets, eventually the cost of a good converges to its marginal cost, and so does pricing. So far, the limited actual data points that we have suggest that the most AI savvy enterprises increase hiring of developers, as they see a broad range of use cases with a short term positive ROI.
Good overview of the current landscape of AI tooling and software development. I do find it ironic that at the center of the chart is STILL JIRA..
Quote Citation: Guido Appenzeller, Yoko Li, “The Trillion Dollar AI Software Development Stack | Andreessen Horowitz”, 2025-10-09, https://a16z.com/the-trillion-dollar-ai-software-development-stack/