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AI usage patterns in software teams
Tens of thousands of teams build software inside Linear every day. Over six years that’s given us a detailed picture of how product development happens, from before AI was widely adopted to now.
Model companies and coding tools have published plenty on token usage and code volume, but that captures only one layer of the work. We’re unusually well placed to see the entire workflow behind building a product, from the first issue to the pull request that closes it. What we can’t see is AI usage that happens outside Linear, so this is a picture of adoption inside our own customer base, not the market at large.
We look at three things across that transition. Who is using AI, how it reshapes where teams spend their time across Linear, and whether it changes how much they ship. Together they make a fixed point for where AI-assisted product development stands in 2026, and something to measure the next edition against.
Between January and June 2026 the share of users active on AI features more than doubled in every function. Product climbed fastest, from 12% to 34%, and even go-to-market, the function furthest from the codebase, went from 5% to 18%. We classify roles by normalizing job titles, which carries some error at the edges, but the pattern is too broad to be an artifact of labeling.
Percentage of users active on Linear AI features (Last 30 days) by function
Executives are personally active on AI at rates that match or beat their teams. CEOs at companies of 201 or more people went from 9% to 36% in six months, the largest jump of any cut in this report, suggesting the most senior leaders are learning the technology by using it rather than reading about it. Company size comes from third-party enrichment, so this cut covers fewer workspaces than the rest of the report.
Percentage of users active on Linear AI features (Last 30 days) by executive team
AI adoption roughly tripled everywhere, from startups to enterprises. Company size, usually a good predictor of how fast an organization moves on new technology, barely registers here.
Percentage of users active on Linear AI features (Last 30 days) by company size (employees)
Between June 2025 and June 2026, time spent creating, triaging, and commenting rose in nearly every function, with engineering up roughly 17% on create and triage alone. Founders show much larger swings, up 17 minutes on creation and 26 on commenting, though they’re a smaller cohort and noisier for it. More work seems to need more coordination, and that coordination increasingly sets the context agents act on.