Global music streaming giant Spotify has revealed a dramatic shift in how software is built inside the company, disclosing that some of its most experienced developers have not manually written code for months, following deep integration of artificial intelligence into its engineering operations.
The disclosure was made during Spotify’s fourth-quarter 2025 earnings call, where Co-CEO Gustav Söderström explained that AI systems are now responsible for generating much of the company’s production-ready code. According to him, this change has been in effect since December and has fundamentally altered the daily workflow of Spotify’s engineering teams.
“Our most experienced developers have not written a single line of code since December.”
Söderström said Spotify now relies on an internal AI-driven development system, known within the company as Honk, which is powered by Claude Code, a model developed by Anthropic. Rather than writing syntax line by line, engineers now communicate with the AI using natural language, outlining what they want built or fixed, while the system handles the actual coding and deployment.
He illustrated the new process with a real-life example that underscores how far automation has gone within Spotify’s engineering culture.
“As a concrete example, an engineer at Spotify on their morning commute from Slack on their cell phone can tell Claude to fix a bug or add a new feature to the iOS app.”
“And once Claude finishes that work, the engineer then gets a new version of the app, pushed to them on Slack on their phone, so that he can then merge it to production, all before they even arrive at the office.”
Under this model, engineers act primarily as supervisors and reviewers, validating the AI’s output, checking for errors, and ensuring that the generated code aligns with Spotify’s broader product goals and technical standards. The company insists this does not eliminate the need for human expertise but instead elevates the role of developers toward higher-level decision-making and system design.
Spotify’s leadership credited this AI-assisted workflow for the rapid pace of innovation seen across its platform in 2025, during which the company rolled out dozens of new features spanning music discovery, playlist personalization, podcasts, and audiobooks. Söderström suggested that what Spotify has implemented so far is only an early stage of a much larger transformation.
“We foresee this not being the end of the line in terms of AI development, just the beginning.”
Beyond productivity gains, Spotify believes its competitive edge lies in the scale and uniqueness of the data feeding its AI systems. With billions of user interactions, listening habits, and content signals accumulated over years, the company says it is building datasets that are difficult for rivals to match.
“This is a dataset that we are building right now that no one else is really building. It does not exist at this scale.”
Despite the dramatic change, Spotify insists that human engineers are not being replaced. Their role has evolved into supervising AI output, ensuring security and reliability, and making high-level technical decisions that machines cannot independently handle.
However, the traditional image of programmers typing endless lines of code appears to be fading within Spotify’s engineering culture. What is emerging instead is a new model of software development where AI handles execution while humans provide direction and oversight.
Industry analysts see Spotify’s approach as a significant case study in how generative AI may redefine software engineering across the tech world. If widely adopted, this model could drastically shorten development timelines and reshape the responsibilities of developers everywhere.
At the same time, it raises important questions about accountability, quality assurance, and the long-term implications for engineering jobs. For now, Spotify’s leadership appears confident that the partnership between human expertise and AI execution is delivering results at a speed previously thought impossible.
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