Research · 2026
The AI Engineering Gap
Everyone is telling CEOs that AI makes engineering teams dramatically faster. Very few CEOs are seeing it in their own roadmap, and nobody can tell them why. I am interviewing 30 CEOs of funded startups to find out what is real, what is theatre, and what separates the teams that actually got faster.
The question nobody will say out loud
The claims are everywhere. AI writes most of the code now. Small teams ship like big ones. Ten times faster. Every board meeting has an AI question in it, and every CEO is expected to have an answer.
Yet when I talk to founders privately, most say the same thing. Their roadmap is not obviously faster. Their engineering costs did not go down. They cannot tell whether their team is behind the curve, or whether the curve is mostly marketing.
That gap, between what CEOs are promised and what they can actually see, is what this research is about. Some teams really are faster. Most are not. Finding out what separates them is worth knowing, and right now nobody has an honest answer built on real conversations rather than vendor claims.
What taking part looks like
25 minutes on Google Meet. Seven fixed questions, so every interview can be compared with the rest.
You approve the write-up before anything is published. No surprises, no gotchas.
You get the full report comparing all 30 teams before it is released anywhere else.
The seven questions
- What were you told AI would do for your engineering team, and by whom?
- What did you actually try?
- Is your roadmap genuinely moving faster than it was a year ago?
- Where have you seen a real, measurable gain, even a small one?
- What turned out to be theatre?
- How much pressure are you getting from your board or investors on AI?
- If you could get a straight answer to one question about AI and your team, what would it be?
I am talking to CEOs and founders of funded startups, mostly non-technical, from pre-seed through Series B, plus a small number of private equity operating partners looking across whole portfolios. If that is you, I would genuinely value your take.
Why I am the one asking
I wrote AI Alpha, a book about separating real AI value from AI theatre. I have spent 25 years building companies, with three exits, including a platform acquired by Sony. Today I work as a fractional CTO for non-technical founders, which means I see the gap between AI promises and engineering reality from the inside, every week.
AI Alpha on Amazon30 interviews. Straight answers.
If you run a funded startup and want to be part of the research, grab a slot. Every participant gets the full report first.
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