Replit’s CEO says AI is making software engineering more human

Replit CEO Amjad Masad says AI is making software engineering at his company more cerebral and fun.

That’s a surprising take, given the widespread concern about the so-called “SaaSpocalypse” and fears that AI is replacing coding jobs at software companies.

Speaking on tech journalist Casey Newton’s podcast, Masad said coding agents have changed the day-to-day environment at his company, freeing up engineers for more imaginative tasks. “You are trying a lot of things, you are ideating very quickly,” Masad said. “Two years ago, everyone is hands on keyboard, you hear clicking all the time.” “Now, actually, it’s a lot more vibrant environment,” he added.

Others, too, have scoffed at the idea that AI could spell the end of the software industry.

Jared Spataro, a Microsoft executive overseeing marketing for AI-powered workplace tools, earlier told Business Insider that he thinks that “the rumors of the demise of enterprise software are greatly exaggerated.” Investors, meanwhile, have not been so buoyant.

The notion that AI could let companies build their own software — instead of contracting the work out to dedicated software builders, like Microsoft — rattled the markets earlier this year.

Software engineers themselves have said that coding with AI, while more efficient, quickly leads to burnout, and at least a dozen major companies have laid off workers, citing AI as a reason.

This summer, Meta laid off nearly 1,000 software engineers.

Mark Zuckerberg, however, attributed the cuts to the need to offset AI spending rather than to automation itself.

Masad said that Replit, an integrated coding environment he cofounded in 2016, reached an inflection point in 2025 when Anthropic began releasing its Opus models.

The models could write code more effectively than earlier ones. “My entire life mission around teaching people coding and making coding easier is changing,” Masad recalled thinking at the time. “Everything that I work toward is kind of moot.” Masad said Replit adapted by shifting its mission from teaching people how to code to making coding as easy as possible.

The company built an AI agent to build programs from requests made in plain English, a process now known as vibe coding.

Now, he said, Replit’s engineers spend more time at the whiteboard, taking occasional breaks to send the next prompt to an AI agent. “You create a culture where it’s fun to build things,” Masad said. “You create a culture where it’s not intense all the time.”