All manner of tech companies are now beginning to report how much of their code is written by AI.
Coinbase says that 33% of its code is now written by AI, and they aim to have this rise to 50% by the end of the quarter. Coinbase also has a monthly session where engineers from each team volunteer and show how they’ve been using AI in their workflows.
“Something we started doing is every month we host an “AI speed run”, where one of the engineers volunteers that that month to run a training for how they’re using it,” Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said on the Cheeky Pint podcast. “And we try to cherry pick the people and the teams that are doing it the best. And I think about 33% of code is written by AI now. We have a goal to get to 50% by the end of the quarter. Let’s see if we get there,” he added.
Armstrong said that while they were adopting AI in a big way, it was also important to be cautious with the new technology. “You probably can go too far with it. You don’t want people vibe coding these systems (that are) moving money. And so we’ve really encouraged people do extensive code reviews and have the appropriate checks in place with humans in the loop. But some of the front end pieces etc, you, you can iterate faster,” Armstrong said.
Armstrong said that he wanted AI to be used for use-cases beyond coding. “We wanna make sure it’s used not just in the engineering teams, right? It’s really should be any team. Like Design is using it heavily, (as are) product managers. I think (it can be used to) ingest all the data and tell me what you forecast the revenue to be,” he said.
“Even as CEO, by the way, I use it a lot,” Armstrong said. “You know, we use like a decision making process called Rapids where everyone writes their input. We have a row now for AI that writes its input in as one of the people that help make decisions. And so we’re kind of testing the limits of when can it actually start to be the decision maker on some things and do better than humans,” he added.
Most companies are adopting AI in a big way in their operations. Google had said earlier this year that “well over 30%” of the code at the company was being written by AI, and Microsoft had given a similar number. Anthropic has said that 80% of Claude Code’s code is now written by Claude Code. Shopify, meanwhile, has said that teams wanting more headcount must first show that AI can’t do the same task. The top companies are rushing to adopt AI into their operations, and this could help create efficiencies that can help them stand out from their competititon.