The way forward for work could have arrived before anticipated. That is already evident at Spotifythe place essentially the most skilled software program engineers haven’t written a single line of code in months, in keeping with a senior government.
All because of synthetic intelligence (AI), as it’s more and more taking on routine programming duties and reshaping how the streaming firm builds and updates its merchandise.
Talking at Spotify’s fourth-quarter earnings name, co-chief government officer Gustav Soderstrom famous that AI is now deeply embedded within the music platform’s engineering workflow, which is tasked with producing and deploying software program with minimal human coding.
“Our most skilled builders haven’t written a single line of code since December,” Soderstrom stated in the course of the earnings name.
What are these engineers doing as a substitute?
At Spotify, prime engineers are utilizing an inner system known as “Honk” to hurry up software program improvement and enhance product velocity, the corporate informed analysts on the decision. The platform makes use of generative AI, particularly Anthropic’s Claude Code, together with real-time code-deployment instruments that enable code to be generated, examined, and rolled out remotely.
In the meantime, Spotify’s engineers more and more act as supervisors of the AI system, specializing in guiding, reviewing and refining the system’s output moderately than writing code themselves.
As a substitute of getting laid off, Spotify’s employee roles have merely shifted in the direction of defining necessities, checking high quality and making architectural selections, whereas the AI handles a lot of the routine duties.
“As a concrete instance, an engineer at Spotify on their morning commute from Slack on their cellular phone can inform Claude to repair a bug or add a brand new function to the iOS app,” Soderstrom stated.
Within the first two months of 2026, a number of tech corporations have laid off mid- and senior-level staff because of AI integration into the workforce. These corporations embody Amazon, Google, Salesforce, and extra.
How is that this setup serving to the corporate develop?
The corporate additionally stated that this new strategy has helped it construct and launch merchandise a lot sooner. In 2025, Spotify rolled out greater than 50 new options and updates, together with AI-powered instruments like Prompted Playlists, Web page Match, which hyperlinks bodily books with their audiobooks, and “About This Tune,” which presents listeners background and tales concerning the music they’re taking part in.
The senior government additionally highlighted that Spotify’s huge consumer knowledge provides it a aggressive edge for AI improvement. “It is a dataset that we’re constructing proper now that nobody else is actually constructing. It doesn’t exist at this scale,” he stated. “And we see it bettering each time we retrain our fashions.”
Regardless of the dramatic shift, Soderstrom stated the adjustments must be seen as an early stage of a wider transformation moderately than a ultimate final result. He prompt that AI will grow to be much more deeply embedded in how software program is designed, constructed, and maintained.