Spotify says engineers haven’t written code in months as AI takes over development

Spotify’s most experienced software engineers have not written a single line of code in months, according to a top executive, as artificial intelligence (AI) reshapes how the streaming company builds products.

Speaking during the firm’s fourth-quarter earnings call, co-Chief Executive Officer Gustav Söderström said AI is now deeply embedded in Spotify’s engineering workflow, generating and deploying software with minimal human coding.

“Our most experienced developers have not written a single line of code since December,” Söderström said on the earnings call.

Instead of manually programming, engineers increasingly supervise an internal AI system called “Honk,” which combines generative AI, including Anthropic’s Claude Code, with real-time development tools. The setup allows staff to direct, review and refine output rather than produce code themselves.

“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,” Söderström said.

The company said the approach has accelerated development and deployment. Spotify shipped more than 50 features and updates to its app in 2025, including AI-driven tools such as Prompted Playlists, Page Match for synchronising physical books with audiobooks, and “About This Song,” which provides contextual storytelling.

Söderström also highlighted Spotify’s vast user data as a competitive advantage for AI development.

“This is a dataset that we are building right now that no one else is really building. It does not exist at this scale,” he said. “And we see it improving every time we retrain our models.”

Despite the dramatic shift, Söderström framed the changes as an early phase of a broader transformation rather than a final state, signalling deeper integration of AI into software engineering ahead.