Software is about to eat the world much faster

Marc Andreessen says the old claim that software is eating the world has been borne out, with technology’s share of the market capitalization among the ten largest businesses rising from 31.5% to 94.4% over fifteen years. He argues that software is now moving from the speed of human hands to the speed of compute.

He presents Devin as a sign of that shift, saying coding agents barely existed three years ago and now write most code at leading companies. In his view, that raises engineer leverage from 10x to 100x and eventually 1000x, because engineers move from writing code by hand to directing fleets of agents. He cites examples at Mercedes Benz, Rivian, and Itaú, then argues that every increase in leverage expands demand for software and engineers rather than shrinking it. He frames Cognition as part of a broader thesis that small technical teams with powerful tools can transform large markets.

Reading notes

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• The original “software is eating the world” claim is presented as confirmed by the rise in technology’s share of the market capitalization among the ten largest businesses.
• The essay argues that software creation is shifting from human-speed work to compute-speed work.
• Devin is described as a coding agent that went from 13% of Cognition’s production code to more than 90% in one year.
• The author claims agent-driven coding changes the engineer’s role from manual coding to managing systems of agents.
• Mercedes Benz, Rivian, and Itaú are used as examples of faster migration, test generation, and vulnerability remediation.
• The text argues that higher leverage in software increases demand for software and engineers instead of reducing it.
• Cognition is framed as a company that fits a16z’s belief in ambitious technical founders, small teams, and expanding markets.