The State of AI in Software Engineering Report

Download the H1 2026 Report

AI has gone from coding assistant to a member of the engineering team, and it is rewriting the economics of software development. Jellyfish Research studied how teams really build with AI across 130,000+ developers, 670 companies, and tens of millions of pull requests. The story of H1: spend is exploding, returns are diverging, and most teams cannot yet tell which side they are on. Inside the report:

 

  • The cost shock: how AI spend exploded, with the heaviest users now rivaling the cost of a hire
  • Increased autonomy: why the teams pulling ahead run far more of their work through agents
  • The ROI gap: why faster coding is not translating into faster delivery
  • H2 playbook: what to prioritize to close the gap and get real return on AI

Get the full report now.