Engineering Enablement by DX Planning your 2026 AI tooling budget: guidance for engineering leaders
Oct 17, 2025
Abi Noda, a product and engineering enablement practitioner, joins Laura Tacho to dissect the crucial elements of planning AI budgets for 2026. They discuss per-developer spending trends, emphasizing the need for clear definitions of AI tools and effective multi-vendor strategies. The duo underscores the importance of demonstrating AI's ROI through measurable metrics and the significance of ongoing training to ensure successful adoption. They also highlight the shift towards using AI to solve significant bottlenecks, moving beyond incremental gains.
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Budgets Will Grow And Shift
- Expect larger AI tooling budgets in 2026 as adoption and prices rise.
- Reserve up to 50% of coding-assistance budget for non-coding AI tools and experiments.
Per-Developer Spend Benchmarks
- Many orgs already spend $100–$1,000+ per developer per year on AI tooling.
- GitHub Copilot's enterprise price explains clustering around ~$500 per developer.
Revenue Percentages For Internal Tools
- Companies allocate roughly 1%–8% of revenue to internal productivity tools depending on company type.
- Spending scales from hundreds of thousands for startups to tens of millions for large enterprises.