AI Engineering Revolution: Winners, Chaos & What’s Next | FirstMark

Welcome to a special FirstMark Deep Dive edition of the MAD Podcast. In this episode, Matt Turck and David Waltcher unpack the explosive impact of generative AI on engineering — hands-down the biggest shift the field has seen in decades. You’ll get a front-row seat to the real numbers and stories behind the AI code revolution, including how companies like Cursor hit a $500M valuation in record time, and why GitHub Copilot now serves 15 million developers.

Matt and David break down the six trends that shaped the last 20 years of developer tools, and reveal why coding is the #1 use case for generative AI (hint: it’s all about public data, structure, and ROI). You’ll hear how AI is making engineering teams 30-50% faster, but also why this speed is breaking traditional DevOps, overwhelming QA, and turning top engineers into full-time code reviewers.

We get specific: 82% of engineers are already using AI to write code, but this surge is creating new security vulnerabilities, reliability issues, and a total rethink of team roles. You’ll learn why code review and prompt engineering are now the most valuable skills, and why computer science grads are suddenly facing some of the highest unemployment rates.

We also draw wild historical parallels—from the Gutenberg Press to the Ford assembly line—to show how every productivity boom creates new problems and entire industries to solve them. Plus: what CTOs need to know about hiring, governance, and architecture in the AI era, and why being “AI native” can make a startup more credible than a 10-year-old giant.

Matt Turck (Managing Director)

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/turck/

X/Twitter - https://twitter.com/mattturck

David Waltcher

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidwaltcher

X/Twitter - https://x.com/davidwaltcher

FIRSTMARK

Website - https://firstmark.com

X/Twitter - https://twitter.com/FirstMarkCap

(00:00) Intro & episode setup

(01:50) The 6 waves that led to GenAI engineering

(04:30) Why coding is such fertile ground for Generative AI

(08:25) Break-out dev-tool winners: Cursor, Copilot, Replit, V0

(11:25) Early stats: Teams Are Shipping Code Faster with AI

(13:32) Copilots vs Autonomous Agents: The Current Reality

(14:14) Lessons from History: Every Tech Boom Creates New Problems

(21:53) FirstMark Survey: The Headaches AI Is Creating for Developers

(22:53) What’s Now Breaking: Security, CI/CD flakes, QA Overload

(29:16) The New CTO Playbook to Adapt to the AI Revolution

(33:23) What Happens to Engineering Orgs if Everyone is a Coder?

(40:19) Founder opportunities & the dev-tool halo effect

(44:24) The Built-in Credibility of AI-Native Startups

(46:16) The Irony of Dev Tools As Biggest Winners in the AI Gold Rush

(47:43) What’s Next for AI and Engineering?