TLDR: Replit CEO Amjad Masad discusses the transformative impact of AI agents, distinguishing them from copilots by their autonomous, long-duration work capabilities. He highlights their rapid advancement, predicting they will soon handle complex tasks for days. Masad clarifies that AI agents will not displace software engineers but rather increase the demand for managing them, while potentially reducing the need for roles like support representatives. He envisions a future where AI empowers individuals to become ‘generalists,’ leading to smaller, more efficient companies.
Amjad Masad, founder and CEO of Replit, a company at the forefront of AI agents and coding tools, recently shared profound insights into the evolving landscape of work, emphasizing the growing presence and capabilities of AI as colleagues. Speaking on the sidelines of Bloomberg’s Going to Work event in Baltimore, Masad articulated a clear distinction between AI agents and AI copilots.
According to Masad, AI copilots function as chatbots, engaging in one-shot interactions where users chat with them to complete specific tasks. In contrast, AI agents are designed for extended periods of autonomous work without constant monitoring. These agents can leverage various tools, access diverse databases and knowledge, conduct deep research, and determine their own completion or halting conditions before reporting back to a human. Masad noted that this level of AI agent capability became increasingly prevalent around January or February of the current year.
He highlighted the astonishing pace of AI agent development, referencing a nonprofit called METR that, in late last year, published a paper suggesting AI agent unsupervised run time was doubling every seven months. Masad, however, stated that this projection significantly underestimated the actual speed of advancement. He recalled that Replit Agent 1 could initially run unsupervised for only two to three minutes before losing coherence. By February, this had extended to 20 minutes, and currently, Replit’s AI agents can perform ‘actual useful work’ for up to three hours, often with high accuracy. Masad asserted, ‘It is not doubling. It is 10xing every few months.’ He further predicted that by next year, AI agents would be capable of handling work chunks requiring a day or two to complete.
Regarding the impact on the workforce, particularly software engineers, Masad offered a nuanced perspective. He believes that AI agents will not lead to displacement within engineering. Instead, he argues, ‘For so long, the entire economy has been bottlenecked by software engineers. We need a lot more software. So it is hard to see it actually create displacement within engineering because AI agents are happening. We need more software engineers to manage more AI agents.’ However, he acknowledged that this might not hold true for all sectors, stating, ‘I don’t need infinite support reps. I need enough support reps to answer the customer. The more AI agents can answer successfully, the fewer support reps that we need.’
Masad’s vision extends to a future where AI acts as a ‘great equalizer,’ democratizing access to coding and entrepreneurship. He envisions a world where individuals, empowered by AI, become ‘generalists’ rather than specialists. ‘You no longer hire a marketing person, you just hire a very smart generalist. You no longer hire a sales operations person, you just hire a great operations generalist because they can learn, they can go to chat and learn something new in less than a week, they can make an application for it, they can automate it,’ Masad explained at Web Summit Qatar 2025. He believes this shift could lead to significantly smaller companies, massively leveraged by AI.
While a controversial quote, ‘We don’t care about professional coders anymore,’ initially sparked debate, Masad clarified that this statement referred to Replit’s target market, shifting focus from professional developers to a new breed of coders who may have no prior coding experience. The goal is to make software creation accessible to anyone with an idea, enabling them to describe tasks in plain language and have AI generate the corresponding code instantly.
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Masad also made a bold prediction that ‘within a year agents will be able to build 20% of SaaS software,’ addressing the common frustration of existing tools not perfectly meeting user needs. This transformative approach, he suggests, will empower individuals to build and launch businesses with unprecedented ease, making entrepreneurship more accessible than ever before.
