AI spend up 60x, yet cost per merged PR falls 26% once salaries counted, says Jellyfish
AI Engineer · youtube · 2026-10-14
At AI Engineer, Jellyfish's Steve Jamison shared engineering economics data showing tokens are the cheap part of AI-assisted development.
Key numbers:
- AI spending grew 60x over the period
- Merged PRs per engineer rose 43%
- Combined cost per merged PR (salary allocated in) declined 26%
- Salary makes up 97.5% of the cost of a merged PR
Framework: compares organizations by AI spend level and developers against their own pre-agent weeks; uses reverts as a limited quality proxy; cautions that more code and PRs don't prove customer value, and these are observational, not causal, findings. The takeaway for managers: build a consistent view of total engineering cost, output, and quality before deciding where to encourage or cap AI adoption.
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