Coinbase CEO Pushes for 50% of Platform Code to Be AI-Generated by 2026

Coinbase's chief executive drops ambitious automation target—betting big on artificial intelligence to reshape crypto's infrastructure.

The AI Takeover Accelerates

No more vague promises about 'efficiency gains.' The exchange's leadership wants half its codebase written by machines within months—not years. That means smarter wallets, self-healing smart contracts, and trading algorithms that adapt faster than any human team.

Why This Isn't Just Another Tech Flex

For an industry built on decentralization, this move leans hard into centralized automation. Critics whisper about over-reliance on black-box systems—especially when real money's on the line. But supporters argue it’s the only way to scale securely while keeping fees competitive.

One cynical finance veteran quipped: 'Finally, something on Coinbase that moves faster than their customer support.'

The bottom line? If AI can code better than humans, even developers might need to hedge with some crypto allocations.

Armstrong was very serious about this AI revolution, to the point where he made the platform’s employees start using AI coding assistants after recently acquiring enterprise licenses for both GitHub Copilot and Cursor.

GitHub Copilot is an AI coding assistant plugin for existing code editors, focusing on quick, inline code suggestions and task completion. Meanwhile, Cursor is a specialized AI code editor built from the ground up on VS Code.

According to a GitHub survey of 500 U.S. developers at large companies, around 92% are already employing AI-driven coding tools such as GitHub Copilot and Cursor. These tools are either deployed during work or for their personal projects, while 70% report that these tools give them a competitive advantage in their daily tasks

Coinbase CEO fires employees who won’t use AI coding

Of course, Brian Armstrong realized it may take several quarters to fully onboard company’s computer engineers to start using AI coding tools. Meanwhile, he needed everyone onboard within a short time. So, he reportedly went on Slack and obligated every engineer to onboard by the end of the week.

“We need you to all learn it and at least onboard. You don’t have to use it every day yet until we do some training, but at least onboard by the end of the week,” said Armstrong as quoted by Fortune.

“And if not, I’m hosting a meeting on Saturday with everybody who hasn’t done it, and I’d like to meet with you to understand why,” he added.

During the Saturday meeting, Armstrong questioned each employee that failed to onboard with the AI coding programs. The ones who had a good reason were allowed to stay, those that didn’t allegedly got fired.

Coinbase had not responded to Fortune’s request for comment.

Armstrong has been particularly bullish on AI adoption, especially in the workforce. And he’s not the only one. In fact, many CEOs from firms like Google, Microsoft, Shopify and other tech companies have been mandating and strongly urging its employees to use AI.

Most recently, Galaxy Digital CEO Michael Novogratz has expressed Optimism on AI’s role in boosting the stablecoin usage as more and more integration between AI and crypto start to surface. Novogratz believes that AI Agents will become the biggest users of stablecoin, which will lead to an explosive amount of transactions within the market.

Back in March 2025, vibe coding became a hot topic among start-ups and tech companies as wannabe-developers began using AI to build applications and tools without prior knowledge of coding. All they needed to do was ask AI to generate the code they needed. Many were able to build their own applications and projects based around the “vibe coding.” method.