Coinbase says AI now writes over 95% of its code — doing the work of 1,200 employees

Coinbase's head of platform, Rob Witoff, told Cointelegraph that "close to 100%" of the company's code is now written by or with large language models, putting the share somewhere between 95% and 100%.

How Fast the Share of AI Code Grew

The share of AI-generated code has more than doubled since February 2026, when the company put it at 40%. Today, 100% of Coinbase's employees use AI daily in their work. Each engineer at the company now works with five to ten active AI agents simultaneously, together doing the equivalent of 1,200 employees' worth of work.

How Team Structures Have Changed

Groups of two to three senior engineers now handle tasks that previously required 10 or more people. Prototyping at the company is fully automated, core systems are built through a hybrid human-AI model, and cryptography remains an area requiring manual specialist work. Most of the resulting job cuts hit junior developers, along with marketing, support, and compliance staff.

Where Human Oversight Stays Mandatory

The company stresses that for sensitive areas — chiefly cryptography and core security — human oversight remains central to the process, rather than just a formal check after AI has already done the work.

Why It Matters

Coinbase — one of the largest publicly traded crypto companies — has effectively become a showcase for how quickly a tech company's hiring structure can shift under aggressive AI agent adoption: doubling the share of AI-written code in just a few months, and talk of replacing 1,200 employees' worth of work, isn't an abstract forecast — it's a description of an engineering reorganization that has already happened. At the same time, preserving human oversight specifically in security-critical areas shows that even at this scale of automation, the company is drawing a clear line between what can be trusted to AI and what requires direct human involvement.

This material is for informational purposes only and is not investment advice.