Redazione RHC : 11 July 2025 10:00
Generative AI, including tools like Cursor and ClaudeCode, are dramatically reducing the cost and time of software development. What once cost hundreds or thousands of dollars per token can now be achieved for just a few tens of cents, leading to a reversal of the industry’s dynamics.
The comparison with the media world is illuminating: just as the Internet and YouTube have disrupted the pay-TV model, AI is profoundly changing the programming landscape. While companies previously held a monopoly on expertise and market access, today the barrier to entry has collapsed.
In the world of content, the reduction of barriers has favored the birth of millions of new creators: from a few thousand channels to over 113 million on YouTube, with over 32,300 creators with over a million subscribers. Costing around $25,000 to start a TV show, compared to $3,000 to launch a successful YouTube channel, is a radical shift—and the same goes for AI in coding.
In the software industry, while writing thousands of lines used to require large budgets, now it only takes a few hundred dollars to generate millions of lines thanks to AI. Some critics argue that quality, market fit, and distribution remain differentiating factors, but the article argues that this view is shortsighted: if software production becomes unlimited, what value can be derived from a single vendor?
Traditional companies may face decreasing margins: until now, software guaranteed profits of 90%,but the abundance of generative solutions will make margins increasingly thin. In the future, competition will focus on marketing and sales, as well as integrations and services, but it will be a “race to the bottom,” in which only those who adapt will survive.
Finally, the more philosophical aspect: software risks becoming secondary to hardware. If code becomes infinitely generatable, computational power will prevail, meaning chips and infrastructure.
In a future dominated by AI, value will shift toward increasingly powerful devices, with custom software already integrated, a bit like what happened in the first large computing machines.
It goes without saying that the article makes a contextual reflection that many will not appreciate. The massive introduction of artificial intelligence in software development is in fact disrupting consolidated models and challenging those who have always based their competitiveness solely on labor or positional rents. It’s not just about automating lines of code, but about radically changing the way we design, test, and deploy applications, with a direct impact on pricing, job roles, and market dynamics.
This transformation, while frightening in its speed and scope, also opens up enormous opportunities for those who can adapt: more room for creativity, more room for experimentation, and a lower barrier to entry for startups and innovators, just as happened in traditional media.
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