In a striking statement that underscores the rapid evolution of artificial intelligence in software development, Replit CEO Amjad Masad declared, “We don’t care about professional coders anymore.”
Speaking to Semafor’s Reed Albergotti on Monday, Masad revealed how AI breakthroughs have fundamentally shifted the company’s focus, redefining its approach to software creation and its target audience.
This transformation comes as Meta’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, announced plans to replace mid-level engineers with AI by 2025, highlighting a growing trend of AI-driven workforce disruption reshaping industries worldwide.
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Replit has faced a series of challenges over the past year. In April, the company moved its headquarters out of San Francisco, citing a desire for more flexibility and reduced costs. In May, Replit underwent layoffs, reducing its workforce by half to about 65 employees.
Despite these setbacks, the company has seen remarkable growth, with its revenue increasing five-fold over the last six months. This surge is largely attributed to the September launch of Agent, an AI-powered tool capable of creating fully functional software applications from simple natural language prompts.
Agent, Masad said, it’s “the first at-scale working software agent you can try in the world today. And it’s the only one, I would say.” The tool represents a significant leap forward, automating the software creation process in ways previously considered unattainable.
Replit’s journey toward developing Agent was not without doubts. The company, which has embraced AI since its founding in 2016, initially believed that such a tool might not be possible this decade. Even as Replit formed an “agent task force” last year to work on the project, Masad remained uncertain about its viability.
What changed was a breakthrough in October 2024, when a new model from Anthropic called Claude 3.5 Sonnet achieved record scores on a coding benchmark known as SWE-bench. This development exceeded expectations, enabling Replit to launch Agent far earlier than anticipated.
“I knew all this stuff was coming. I just didn’t think it was going to come this fast,” Masad admitted.
While Replit had been building its own models using proprietary data that captured every aspect of the coding process, the superior performance of Anthropic’s model prompted a strategic pivot. Replit decided to leverage Claude 3.5 Sonnet instead of relying solely on its in-house developments.
Rethinking the Role of Coders
The success of Agent has led to a significant shift in Replit’s target audience. Traditionally aimed at professional coders, the platform is now focusing on individuals with little to no coding experience.
“We don’t care about professional coders anymore,” Masad said. Instead, Replit is empowering non-coders to use AI tools to create software, marking a new era in accessibility and innovation.
Masad explained the concept behind this shift with what he calls “Amjad’s Law,” which posits that the return on learning even a little code doubles every six months as AI tools become more powerful and user-friendly.
“Essentially, a very basic understanding of the way software works enables people to take advantage of AI tools that are growing ever more capable,” Masad said.
Replit’s competitive edge lies in its ability to simplify the entire software creation process. While advanced AI models like Claude can generate code, they often require users to handle additional steps, such as server setup and deployment—tasks that can be daunting for non-coders.
“What you’d have to do is pay for Claude, go to AWS to start an EC2 machine, go into that, install Git and Python. Already, most people are just gone at this point,” Masad said, explaining the barriers that Replit eliminates.
Replit enables users with no technical background to build and deploy software applications effortlessly by integrating these steps into a seamless platform. Masad likened this transformation to the evolution of personal computing, where the arcane commands of MS-DOS were replaced by the user-friendly interfaces of Windows.
“I think we’re going to see this era of Windows and mice and desktops as totally cringe,” Masad remarked. AI, he argued, is ushering in a new phase where natural language replaces technical commands, making technology accessible to a broader audience.
The Industry-Wide Shift to AI
Replit’s pivot comes amid a broader industry trend toward AI-driven workforce transformation. Zuckerberg, recently announced plans to replace mid-level engineers with AI by 2025, citing the growing efficiency and capability of AI systems. This revelation highlights the accelerating adoption of AI across industries and its potential to disrupt traditional employment structures.
Together, Replit’s Agent and Meta’s strategic shift underscore the inevitability of global workforce disruption by AI. As AI tools become more sophisticated, they are not only automating repetitive tasks but also redefining what roles are necessary in the modern workplace.
However, while Agent has been a runaway success, its reliance on Anthropic’s Claude 3.5 Sonnet poses challenges. The model is not exclusive to Replit, raising questions about the company’s long-term competitive edge.
“Just the fact that we’re able to get here without using our data poses a lot of questions for the industry,” Masad acknowledged. “As long as we keep the rate of innovation and the rate of progress, and we keep deepening that, I think we can continue to be ahead. But the business question is, ‘what is the durable moat?’”
Replit plans to leverage its proprietary data to fine-tune larger foundation models, aiming to maintain its leadership in the rapidly growing AI industry.