GitLab CEO on why AI isn't helping enterprise ship code faster

AI coding assistants are boosting developer productivity, but most enterprises aren’t shipping software any faster. GitLab CEO Bill Staples says the reason is simple: coding was never the main bottleneck. After speaking with more than 60 customers, Staples found that developers spend only 10–20% of their time writing code. The remaining 80–90% is consumed by reviews, CI/CD pipelines, security scans, compliance checks, and deployment—areas that remain largely unautomated. Faster code generation only worsens downstream queues.

GitLab’s response is its newly GA’ed Duo Agent Platform, designed to automate the full software development lifecycle. The platform introduces “agent flows,” multi-step orchestrations that can take work from issue creation through merge requests, testing, and validation. Staples argues that context is the key differentiator. Unlike standalone coding tools that only see local code, GitLab’s all-in-one platform gives agents access to issues, epics, pipeline history, security data, and more through a unified knowledge graph.

Staples believes this platform approach, rather than fragmented point solutions, is what will finally unlock enterprise software delivery at scale.

Learn more from The New Stack about the latest around GitLab and AI: 

GitLab Launches Its AI Agent Platform in Public Beta

GitLab’s Field CTO Predicts: When DevSecOps Meets AI

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