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.
AI is streamlining Coinbase’s ops
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 on the lookout for over 150 devs, engineers
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
Fewer crypto layoffs, but also fewer job openings
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.
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