Grindr CEO says AI is doing work that would have required hiring 200 additional engineers

Grindr CEO George Arison told shareholders that implementing artificial intelligence (AI) within the company had resulted in a 2.5-fold increase in engineering output, without requiring an additional 200 engineers or an extra $60 million in annual costs. This bold assertion comes as AI increasingly automates tasks that would have otherwise required a significant workforce.

Arison's estimate, initially described as "conservative" by the company, has since been revised to 3.5 times the output, during an earnings call. The CEO justified the smaller reported increase, saying the larger figure sounded "unreasonable." However, industry experts like Goldman Sachs' CIO Marco Argenti argue that lines of code, often used to measure productivity, are a flawed metric.

Instead, Gartner suggests measuring by AI tokens produced, which can lead to "tokenmaxxing." Grindr's leadership believes AI allows their most skilled engineers to focus on areas that require human creativity and judgment, preserving their expertise. Despite the potential for AI to replace engineers, Grindr's workforce size has remained stable, with job openings for software engineers even increasing this year.