A global survey of 2,786 C-level executives finds organizations are saving $28,249 per developer annually due to investments in artificial intelligence (AI), in part thanks to a 48% increase in developer productivity.

Conducted by The Harris Poll on behalf of GitLab, 58% of respondents report their organization has experienced business growth tied to software innovation efforts over the last 12 months, resulting in an estimated 44% increase in revenue.

A total of 91% of respondents also noted that the board of their organization has adopted the benefits of software innovation, with 82% reporting a willingness to invest over half of their company’s annual IT budget in prioritizing software innovation. A full 90% have adopted frameworks linking software development activities to key business outcomes.

The most common metrics used today to measure software innovation success are increased business growth (40%), improved problem-solving capabilities (40%), and enhanced developer productivity (39%).

Emilio Salvador, vice president of strategy and developer relations for GitLab, said the survey results make it clear that the economic impact AI is having on software development is profound. However, 90% of respondents said that despite these advances, their organizations continue to hire application developers to increase the pace at which applications are being developed, he added.

In fact, 91% report that software innovation is now a core business priority, with 89% expecting agentic AI to become the industry standard for software development within three years. Most of the reliance on those AI agents will be to not just write code but also offload tasks such as testing, noted Salvador. As a result, developers will have more time to focus on the problems they are trying to solve, as opposed to performing a range of manual tasks that take time away from building software, he added.

The human touch will also continue to be needed to build high-quality applications, said Salvador. Nearly all (99%) respondents, for example, noted that human contributions are still valuable for software development, with 73% noting the human-AI partnership should be at least 50/50; compared to 27% that said AI should do the majority of the work. Creativity (39%) and strategic vision (39%) are ranked as the most valued human inputs.

Despite the current level of appreciation of the value of AI, the survey also makes it clear that there are challenges and concerns to be addressed. Topping the list of concerns around the adoption of agentic AI, for example, are cybersecurity threats (52%), data privacy and security (51%), and maintaining governance (45%). More than half of respondents (53%) are implementing regulatory-aligned governance measures, with a nearly equal percentage (52%) developing internal AI policies. A total of 47% are already relying on third-party audits of AI usage, the survey finds.

Other challenges that organizations will ultimately face will include an expansion of the number of DevOps pipelines that will need to be managed as the amount of code being created continues to increase, noted Salvador.

Finally, organizations should not overlook the need to retrain software development teams, many of which may soon include citizen developers using vibecoding tools to rapidly build prototypes of applications, he added. A total of 92% of respondents also noted that businesses should prioritize training employees to work alongside agentic AI to address skill gaps, the survey finds.

It’s not clear just yet how much application development will be accelerated in the age of AI, but the one thing that is clear is that no aspect of how software is built, updated, secured and managed will be left untouched. The only thing left to determine now is how quickly this transition to relying more on AI to build applications is going to occur.