Preliminary data from our longitudinal AI impact study

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A longitudinal study by DX analyzing 40 companies from November 2024 to February 2026 found that despite a 65% increase in AI tool usage, PR throughput only improved by ~10%. This contradicts vendor claims of 2-3x productivity gains. The modest improvement is attributed to the fact that writing code was never the primary bottleneck—planning, alignment, code review, and other human-centric SDLC activities remain largely unaffected by AI tools. Engineering leaders are advised to reset internal expectations accordingly.

AI productivity gains are 10%, not 10x

Back then I produced 1 bug, now I produce 10 bugs.
Clearly 10x

For me it’s definitely 10x and I’m a “very senior” dev with over 20 years experience

AI: writes the PR in 30 seconds
Team: reviews it in 3 business days

I think when I’m actually coding it’s doing a lot more than 10%, maybe not 10x but certainly speeds up development significantly, issue is a lot of my time isn’t actually spent coding, it’s speaking to clients and other stakeholders or explaining things to the team, those things ai definitely can’t 10x

Not surprised by this at all. Also, AI is still in its infancy, we are still far from being the 10x developer they are claiming if we simply use AI. This is just a marketing strategy, I would say. They need to get a margin first before anything blows up.