AI Impact & Cost
Last updated: September 2026
Note: This page covers the AI Impact & Cost family of the AI Adoption dashboard. For the code-quality and acceptance-rate metrics from connected AI providers, see AI Impact Metrics.
This family answers: is AI actually paying off?
Other families measure adoption (are people using it?) and output (is work shipping?). This family connects those signals to dollars and hours — the language executives and finance teams need.
These numbers are estimates, not measurements. The dashboard is honest about that throughout, but it is worth saying up front: when we publish “$1.2M in annualized productivity gain,” we mean “directionally, this is the order of magnitude.” Use these numbers for storytelling and order-of-magnitude framing, not for finance reconciliation.
The metrics
| Metric | What it captures |
|---|---|
| Productivity Uplift | The headline ROI numbers. Volume speedup vs. baseline period, plus per-dev and Power-User comparisons within the current window. |
| AI-Assisted Percentage | What % of shipped changes (PRs + commits) had AI assistance. Weighted by lines changed. |
| CapEx / OpEx Split | Software capitalization breakdown. Which work counts as capitalizable engineering investment? |
| Spend by Tier | AI tooling cost allocated across AI Tiers. Where is the money going, and is it landing on Power Users? |
How the metrics connect
Adoption Score → AI-Assisted % → Productivity Uplift → $ saved / week → CapEx / OpEx split → ROI math (Spend by Tier)
The chain is: adoption drives AI-assisted work, AI-assisted work drives productivity uplift, productivity uplift translates to dollar savings, and dollar savings vs. AI spend gives you ROI.
Each step adds assumption uncertainty. The Adoption Score is a clean measurement. The Productivity Uplift estimate carries the most assumption load — see its section for the honest accounting.
Read this family responsibly
Three rules:
- Don’t cite Productivity Uplift to the dollar. It is an estimate. Round generously when reporting.
- Use these numbers for trend storytelling. “Productivity uplift up 2× since rollout began” is a defensible story. “Productivity uplift is $1,234,567/year” is not.
- The CapEx/OpEx split is more solid than the productivity numbers. It is based on category classification of actual shipped work, not on uplift inference. Use it for capitalization accounting with reasonable confidence.
Where this family shows up
- /ai-adoption/ai-impact — the dedicated home for this family. Productivity hero cards, AI Insight banner, Cycle Time and PR Volume by AI Tier, Spend by Tier, CFR by AI Tier.
- /ai-adoption/executive — Productivity Uplift in the hero KPI strip and the executive insight banner.
- /ai-adoption/capex — CapEx / OpEx split as the primary surface.
- /ai-adoption/teams, /ai-adoption/developers — AI-Assisted % appears in trend lines and breakdowns.