Satya Nadella confirms it: 30% of Microsoft’s code is written by AI

In a revealing conversation at LlamaCon, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella confirmed that artificial intelligence now generates about 30% of the code across some of the company’s projects. This insight underscores a major shift in how big tech companies are embracing AI for software development, highlighting not only its growing capabilities but also its increasing acceptance among engineers.

AI is becoming a core developer at Microsoft

Nadella explained that Microsoft closely tracks acceptance rates of AI-generated code, which currently range between 30% and 40% and are steadily rising. The AI tools are proving especially effective at producing entirely new blocks of code, rather than editing existing software. While much of Microsoft’s infrastructure remains in C++—a language where AI still underperforms—the newer Python codebases have shown “fantastic” results when written by AI systems.

Meta sees a similar future

In the same panel, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg revealed that his teams are also exploring self-coding systems. While Meta doesn’t yet have hard figures, Zuckerberg predicted that AI could be responsible for up to 50% of coding within a year, especially in machine learning projects. Both executives emphasized that the evolution of development tools and infrastructure is critical to supporting this transformation.

The line between app and document is fading

Nadella also noted a deeper shift: the convergence of tools like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint into a unified AI-driven experience. He envisioned a future where you start with a simple intent and end with a living software artifact, blurring traditional boundaries between applications and data formats.