Gergely Orosz · 10 min read · AI & Product
What’s the ROI of software engineers’ spending on AI?
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An analysis of AI tool spending across 27 companies reveals wide variation in per-developer costs, with no correlation between company size and AI spend. Data from CodeRabbit shows a ~113-128% increase in weekly PRs among developers using AI code review tools, while Gitar reports 'AI-native' teams shipping 60+ PRs per developer per week. Despite growing adoption and spending, most companies struggle to quantify the actual ROI of their AI investments.
Key Takeaways
- Developers using AI code review tools (CodeRabbit) created over twice as many PRs compared to a year ago, with a 113-128% increase tracked across 20,000 developers.
- AI spending per developer varies dramatically, from $150/month at a 1,500-engineer public company to $3,000/month at a two-person .NET startup, with no link between company size and spend.
- AI-native teams tracked by Gitar ship 60+ PRs per developer per week, suggesting company culture plays a major role in productivity outcomes.
- AI spending peaked in June-July before beginning to decline, and spending caps are becoming a common practice across companies.
- Despite significant investment in AI tools, most companies are currently unable to clearly quantify or articulate the ROI of their AI spending.
Excerpt
A software engineer whose company is looking into its own spending on AI tools pinged me with a very timely question recently, asking what other companies spend on AI, per engineer. They were also keen to find out what the PR throughput was before and after the spending on AI at other places. Spending on AI agents is ballooning at all the tech companies I talk with this year. With 2027 coming around fast, many companies are seeking to put a realistic number on how much they really spend on AI. The change in PR throughput is a very simple…