What’s the ROI of software engineers’ spending on AI? — SkimNews
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- A survey of 27 companies found AI coding-tool spending ranges from $150 to $3,000 per developer per month, with no correlation between company size and budget — a two-person .NET startup spends $3,000/dev/month while a publicly traded firm with 1,500 engineers caps at $150.
- CodeRabbit data shows developers using AI code review tools posted a 113% increase in weekly PRs year-over-year, while Gitar reports "AI-native" teams shipping 60+ PRs per developer per week.
- A quant trading shop with ~5,000 staff saw monthly AI spend balloon from $500K in January to $8M in September — a 16x increase averaging $1,600/dev/month — with traders, not engineers, driving the largest bills.
- A two-person .NET startup in Europe reports 60 PRs/dev/week (up 5-10x), clearing a decade-old backlog: "We barely type code anymore. It feels like our two-person team is doing the work that would have taken about 5-7 people before AI."
- Big Tech approaches diverge sharply — Meta and NVIDIA encourage developers to use AI heavily, while Apple engineers "are far more cautious," according to surveyed engineering leaders.
- Publicly traded SaaS results split: a hospitality firm with a $1,500/dev/month cap saw PR frequency flat, while one 5,000-person firm saw PRs double from 4 to 8 per dev per week; a Staff Engineer elsewhere warned of "accelerated slop produced all around me" even as velocity held steady.
- Summer spending peaks have reversed — costs have roughly halved at API-plan companies after adoption of Opus 5.5 and open models, though several firms warned subsidized subscriptions are ending with bills set to rise 5-10x.
Why it matters: Few of the 27 surveyed firms can quantify what AI coding tools actually return in productivity, and a Staff Engineer at one public SaaS company noted "accelerated slop produced all around me" even as dev velocity stayed flat. With subsidized AI subscriptions expiring and bills set to rise 5-10x at some firms, the gap between soaring per-developer spend and unmeasured output may force harder budget discipline as 2027 approaches.
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