Coinbase Aims for 50% AI-Generated Code by October, Sparking Industry Debate

Brian Armstrong Wants Half of Coinbase Code To Be AI-Written By October - Decrypt

The surge in AI-assisted coding contrasts with the "vibe coding" trend, where developers lean on AI for coding with minimal oversight. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said Wednesday that he wants 50% of the cryptocurrency exchange's daily code to be generated using artificial intelligence by October. "Obviously it needs to be reviewed and understood, and not all areas of the business can use AI-generated code. But we should be using it responsibly as much as we possibly can," Armstrong tweeted. AI-generated code already makes up roughly 40% of Coinbase's daily production, according to Armstrong. The CEO has been outspoken in his push to expand AI's role across the company, even acknowledging on a podcast last month that he had fired programmers who resisted using AI coding tools. He later admitted the move was "heavy-handed" and unpopular among some staff. Armstrong's target reflects both Coinbase's internal push and a broader industry shift. OpsLevel, which creates internal dev portals, found that as of June 2025, 94% of tech companies had staff employing AI coding assistants, with productivity and speed to market cited as the key benefits. AI-assisted coding generally involves developers leaning on AI for rapid code generation while still debugging, reviewing and maintaining an understanding of what the machine is doing. But it has also grown alongside the rise of "vibe coding," a term popularized this year by computer scientist Andrej Karpathy, former senior AI director at Tesla and founder of Eureka Labs. In his description, vibe coding means abandoning active oversight of the code entirely and accepting AI suggestions wholesale, pasting in error messages without understanding them, and letting projects evolve largely outside human comprehension. "Sometimes the LLMs can't fix a bug so I just work around it or ask for random changes until it goes away. It's not too bad for throwaway weekend projects, but still quite amusing," he tweeted. "I'm building a project or webapp, but it's not really coding - I just see stuff, say stuff, run stuff, and copy paste stuff, and it mostly works." Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan also revealed a quarter of the accelerator's Winter 2025 batch relied on AI for 95% of their code. The onslaught of AI has led to concerns about its impact on the job market for developers. Concerns have also been raised over whether constant use of the tools could decrease people's understanding of what they are creating -- with the result that safety issues could be overlooked. Where the data used to train these AI agents comes from is also a concern. Art Abal, co-founder of community-owned data network Vana, told Decrypt that while he thought Coinbase was moving in the right direction, he had questions. "I can't help but wonder how much of that AI-generated code was trained on human-created data, and how much of the value those humans created is flowing back to them? My guess is close to none," he said. "We need a better system of data ownership," Abal added. "Otherwise, the very people whose data trained these models will be excluded from the innovation and efficiency gains they made possible. Without it, humans risk becoming nothing more than 'data cows' endlessly milked, never compensated."

Coinbase CEO wants AI to write 50% of his platform's code by October

Over 40% of the lines of code contributing to Coinbase's systems are now written by AI, more than double the figure in April. Over 40% of Coinbase's code is written by artificial intelligence, according to the firm's CEO, Brian Armstrong, and he has hopes the figure will rise to 50% by next month. "Obviously it needs to be reviewed and understood, and not all areas of the business can use AI-generated code. But we should be using it responsibly as much as we possibly can," Armstrong posted to X on Wednesday. The percentage of AI-generated lines of code at Coinbase has more than doubled since April, according to the chart he shared. His comments come about a month after Coinbase said one of its biggest focuses is to transform its workforce into "AI-Natives" -- signaling it doesn't plan to replace a significant share of its 4,200 employees with AI anytime soon. The increased integration of AI into the workforce has sparked widespread fears that many roles will be replaced by AI in the future. The New York Post recently cited an "Oklahoma tech expert" who predicted that job losses caused by AI will cause a global population collapse from 8 billion to 100 million by the year 2300. But White House's AI and crypto czar David Sacks and researchers at Big Four accounting firm PwC are among many who have criticized the gloomy predictions, arguing the AI job loss narrative is overhyped and that it may instead boost employee productivity. That view appears to align with Coinbase's approach as its engineers now regularly use AI-powered coding tools like Copilot, Claude Code, and Cursor to perform their work. "This has enabled profound success stories that weren't possible 12 months ago, like single engineers refactoring, upgrading or building new codebases in days instead of months." Armstrong recently said on John Collison's "Cheeky Pint" podcast that he fired engineers who couldn't give a good reason for not integrating AI into their everyday work just a week after posting a mandate in one of Coinbase's Slack channels demanding its engineers to start using it. Coinbase is continuing to hire aggressively in its engineering and development departments, with nearly half of its roughly 350 current job openings seeking hard-skilled professionals, according to its website. Of these, 93 are specifically backend engineering roles, many of which reference AI in the job title or early in the job description. Customer experience is by far the highest non-tech role with 56 openings. Related: AI will make stocks obsolete, driving investors to Bitcoin: Analyst While large-scale layoffs have eased across the crypto market, industry recruiters have observed a significant tightening in crypto hiring since 2022, largely attributing it to AI diverting talent and capital away from the sector. "Developers and entrepreneurs follow the money and excitement, and right now AI is soaking up both," CryptoJobsList founder Raman Shalupau and researcher Stefi Kiemeney said in comments to Cointelegraph last month.

Brian Armstrong Wants More Than Half Of Daily Code Written At Coinbase To Be AI-Generated: Should Use 'Responsibly As Much As We Possibly Can' - Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN), Coinbase Global (NASDAQ:COIN)

Coinbase Global Inc. COIN CEO Brian Armstrong announced on Wednesday an ambitious plan to expand the percentage of AI-generated code at the company to more than 50% within the next month. COIN is biding its time at current levels. Track the latest developments here. AI To Eclipse Human-Written Code? Armstrong stated in an X post that AI generates approximately 40% of daily code at Coinbase and aims to boost this to 50% by October. "Obviously it needs to be reviewed and understood, and not all areas of the business can use AI-generated code. But we should be using it responsibly as much as we possibly can," he added. See Also: Trump Family's Stake Swells To $1.46 Billion As American Bitcoin Makes Stock Market Debut Coinbase's AI Ambition The cryptocurrency behemoth aims to expand use and familiarity with large language models, AI systems that process and generate human-like content. "In looking across the company, we find that teams that adopt LLMs at a faster rate are building frontend UI features, working with less-sensitive data backends, and quickly expanding their unit testing suites," Coinbase said in a blog post. Coinbase revealed that its AI adoption has "rapidly increased" since it started using Cursor, a popular AI-powered code editor. The company was confident that AI would boost productivity "tremendously" in the long run. A Heavy-Handed Approach? The ambitious AI push comes after Armstrong admitted to firing engineers who failed to adopt AI tools. He acknowledged his approach was "heavy-handed" but stressed the necessity of AI integration. Coinbase's aim to boost AI adoption was consistent with broader industry trends, in which the technology is increasingly viewed as a key tool for productivity and creativity. Earlier this year, Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia Corp. NVDA, said that AI will replace mundane tasks, warning that those who ignore AI advancements risk being left behind. Tech giants like Amazon.com Inc. AMZN and Microsoft Corp. MSFT have also expedited AI integration into their workflows, encouraging engineers to employ AI tools to achieve higher output objectives. Price Action: Coinbase shares were down 0.25% in pre-market trading after closing 0.41% lower at $302.31 during Wednesday's regular trading session, according to data from Benzinga Pro. As of this writing, COIN ranked high on Growth and Momentum metrics. Visit Benzinga Edge Stock Rankings to compare it to the "Mag 7" tech giants. Read Next: Tom Lee: Ethereum Could Reach $62,000 If It Hits This ETH/BTC Ratio Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of Benzinga Neuro and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors. Image Credit: Shutterstock AMZNAmazon.com Inc$229.001.33%Stock Score Locked: Want to See it? Benzinga Rankings give you vital metrics on any stock - anytime. Reveal Full ScoreEdge RankingsMomentum72.11Growth92.26Quality60.52Value51.06Price TrendShortMediumLongOverviewCOINCoinbase Global Inc$302.13-0.06%MSFTMicrosoft Corp$504.40-0.19%NVDANVIDIA Corp$171.610.58%Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs

Brian Armstrong Says AI-Generated Code To 'Eclipse' Human Output at Coinbase by Year-End

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said he wants over half of the code the company outputs each day to be AI-generated by October. | Credit: Steven Ferdman / Getty Images . * Coinbase has started measuring the percentage of code that is AI-generated. * The company expects AI-generated code to "eclipse" human output by the end of the year. * CEO Brian Armstrong said Coinbase should be using AI-generated code "as much as we possibly can." Brian Armstrong said that he wants more than half the code written each day at Coinbase to be AI-generated by October. Armstrong's statement reflects Coinbase's increasingly AI-centric approach to software development, which has seen the company adopt Large Language Model (LLM)-powered tools like Cursor, Copilot, and Claude Code. Coinbase Measuring Percentage of Code Written by AI In an X post on Wednesday, September 3, Armstrong shared a graph that shows the percentage of Coinbase's daily code output that is generated by AI. From less than 20% at the start of April, the figure has climbed to more than 40% today, and Armstrong said he wants to reach more than 50% by October. Coinbase's Kyle Cesmat and Chitra Venkatramani echoed that sentiment in a blog post, writing that "AI is on track to eclipse human-generated code at Coinbase by the end of the year." Turbocharging Developer Efficiency Coinbase isn't alone in its efforts to streamline previously labor-intensive coding tasks using AI. Across the software industry, developers are using AI code assistants to automate workflows. Such tools are especially useful for tasks that are well-defined and repetitive, like generating standard database operations or API client code. "This has enabled profound success stories that weren't possible 12 months ago, like single engineers refactoring, upgrading or building new codebases in days instead of months," Cesmet and Venkatramani observed. Armstrong stressed that new AI-augmented workflows don't make human developers obsolete. Code still needs to be reviewed and understood, "and not all areas of the business can use AI-generated code," he said. Nonetheless, "we should be using it responsibly as much as we possibly can," the Coinbase CEO concluded. AI "Not a Magic Bullet" Exploring where AI has had the most impact, Cesmet and Venkatramani found that teams working on front-end features were adopting LLMs at a faster rate. Meanwhile, those working with low-level systems and sensitive data, where AI hallucinations can result in security vulnerabilities, have not experienced the same "meaningful increase" in AI usage. "Leveraging LLMs for coding is not a magic-bullet we should expect teams to universally adopt." "Our most senior engineers might spend weeks finding the right fixes to make, and it's important to focus on results, not any single path to get there," they emphasized.