Podcast Summary: AI & I — Four Predictions for How AI Will Change Software in 2026

Host: Dan Shipper
Guest: Brandon (COO at Every)
Date: December 31, 2025

Episode Overview

This episode of AI & I features Dan Shipper and Brandon reflecting on the seismic changes AI has brought to software and business in 2025, and making informed predictions for how these trends will shape the industry in 2026. They draw deeply from firsthand experiences scaling Every—a bundle of AI-powered tools and newsletters—and debate the opportunities, risks, and cultural transformations as AI becomes ever more integral to work and life.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Every’s Breakout Year & Business Evolution (01:11 – 06:53)

• Every’s Growth Trajectory:
  • After years of flat growth, 2025 marked a breakthrough, with the business nearly doubling its Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) from around $65k to $150k, largely catalyzed by new AI product launches and successful marketing drives.
  • Quote: “This year it's just like, we just totally bent the curve... starting in June, we basically doubled the business.” — Dan (03:07)
• Role of AI Product Integration:
  • Products like Quora (AI email assistant), Sparkle, and Spiral (AI ghostwriter) packed into a single subscription drove value and customer interest.
  • Strategic events—such as the Claude Code Camp webinars and Dan’s appearance on Lenny’s podcast—acted as key inflection points.
• Operational Growth:
  • Team expanded from 5 to almost 20 FTEs, with an accompanying surge in consulting business.
  • A major push to unify the customer experience: “We have single sign-on… unified billing… groundwork for a unified memory and context layer.” — Dan (07:28)
• Cultural Balancing Act:
  • The challenge of scaling while maintaining a “genuine” and experimental internal culture.
  • “The things that we build are the things that like any one of us is like, this is interesting, I need it, it's cool.” — Brandon (08:51)

2. The Agents Paradigm and AI-Native Architectures (11:34 – 16:41)

• Agentic Development Inside Apps:
  • Prediction: By the end of 2026, agentic development will be natively embedded within applications—users and agents will interact directly inside the app.
  • “Agentic development will be maybe by the end of the year inside of the app that you're actually using… you can DM this tool… and it will write some code and then submit a PR for it.” — Brandon (11:51)
• Three Levels of Agent Native Architecture:
  • Level 1: Anything the user can do, an agent can do.
  • Level 2: Anything the code in the app can do, the agent can do.
  • Level 3: Anything a developer can do, the agent can do—up to submitting PRs and custom features for users.
  • “Anything inside of an app that the user can do, the agent can do... that's going to be a broadly distributed paradigm in a year that no one's really talking about right now, except for Anthropic.” — Dan (15:11)
• Designers as AI Superheroes:
  • AI removes technical barriers for designers, letting highly creative people fully realize end-to-end products visually.
  • “Designers are the next big superheroes of the AI age… Now they're going to be able to code, and the stuff they can make because code is cheap.” — Dan (17:07)
  • Tools like Cursor are surfacing as bridges but still pose usability hurdles.

3. Deepfake Risks and the Coming Need for AI Content Labeling (19:35 – 23:14)

• Rise of AI-Generated and Misleading Media:
  • Social platforms aren’t labeling AI-generated content, which is accelerating public confusion and misinformation.
  • “My mom sent me a video... It looked totally real… I was like, mom, that's just not real. That's AI. And she refused to believe me.” — Brandon (19:35)
• Election-Year Predictions:
  • Anticipation of a major incident during the next U.S. election cycle involving deepfakes, potentially forcing regulatory intervention:
  • “That's my doomer take. Something’s going to happen with elections… that will trigger some sort of label that's like ‘made with AI.’” — Brandon (22:12)
• The Disney-OpenAI Sora Effect:
  • Integration of familiar, fictitious characters into generative video could further blur public understanding of what's real.

4. The New Landscape of Software Engineering (23:14 – 28:38)

• Three (Maybe Four) Types of Engineers Emergent:
  1. Traditional engineers (not using AI, increasingly rare).
  2. Traditional engineers + AI (augmenting workflows, but remain “hands-on”).
  3. Vibe coders (non-coders building via AI, often in a playful/amateurish manner).
  4. Agentic/Compound engineers (manage and orchestrate AIs, focus on higher-level architectural and governance tasks, rarely touch code themselves).
  • “They are fully committed to delegating all of the actual programming work to an AI agent…not vibe coding, but not traditional engineering either.” — Dan (25:00)
• Job Security & Industry Transformation:
  • Traditional engineering roles will decline slowly over years, but there will be a persistent need for “traditional+AI” engineers.
  • Younger talent and new grads will gravitate toward agentic approaches.
  • Education may lag behind: “I do wonder, like, how these schools are going to adjust.” — Brandon (27:59)

5. AI's Everyday Adoption & Workplace Disruption (28:41 – 32:04)

• AI Use by Nontechnical Professionals:
  • Many still use AI passively—for consumer tasks, not at work.
  • True productivity gains will arrive when AI is natively integrated into workplace platforms (like Excel).
  • “Will we leapfrog to the point where Graham no longer has a job or will we steadily get there because he starts using AI a ton himself?” — Brandon (29:55)
• Corporate Layoffs Blamed on AI:
  • 2026 will see more layoffs attributed to AI, though many will have other causes.

6. The Reality—and Limits—of AI Progress (32:04 – 36:16)

• No AGI by 2027, But Fast Progress:
  • Despite some doomsday (or utopian) predictions, AGI remains elusive and the definition itself keeps changing.
  • “I think AI progress is still really fast and it's kind of mind blowing where we are now versus where we were a year ago. And I think that will be the case at the end of 2026… And we will not have AGI in 2027.” — Dan (32:04)
• What is AGI, Really?
  • Ongoing debate on definitions. Is it autonomy over long stretches of time? Continuous action without frequent human supervision?
  • “To me, AGI is a model that never actually really turns off the conversation. Might just be the fact that I have to go to a window in a browser to engage with it.” — Brandon (33:30)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Growth and Inflection Points:
  • “Every time you hit a new inflection point, the old curve looks really, really small and shitty.” — Dan (07:28)
• On Scaling Culture:
  • “You have to rebuild the business every time the number of people doubles.” — Brandon (09:49)
• On the Power Shift in Tech:
  • “Designers are the next big superheroes of the AI age.” — Dan (17:07)
• On Deepfake Dangers:
  • “I just think it’s really scary that a lot of these social media companies… aren’t putting ‘Made by AI’ as a thing.” — Brandon (20:31)
• On the Meaning of AGI:
  • “I feel like [AI] doesn’t have the tools to live on indefinitely… it needs to have their own sense of agency and almost like individual personhood…” — Dan (35:33)

Key Timestamps

• 01:11 – Reflecting on Every’s breakout year & business inflection
• 03:35 – Product expansion and the “bundle” strategy
• 06:23 – Consulting business and organizational culture
• 11:34 – Introduction to 2026 predictions, “year of the agent”
• 15:11 – Agent Native Architecture explained
• 17:07 – Designers’ new superpowers with AI
• 19:35 – Rise of deepfakes & prediction of regulatory responses
• 23:14 – Types of software engineers in the AI era
• 28:41 – AI adoption among nonengineers; workplace impacts
• 32:04 – AI progress, hype cycles, and the AGI debate
• 35:33 – The challenge in achieving true autonomy and agency in AI