Grindr’s CEO is one of few company leaders to share a number for how many employees it would take to complete the work his company is doing with AI
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The CEO of the dating app Grindr said that AI is doing the amount of work that would’ve required an additional 200 engineers - and would have cost the company significantly.
George Arison said in a letter to shareholders that the company has made significant advancements with the help of AI, Business Insider reported.
He said his “conservative estimate” was that engineering output increased by 2.5 times between July 2025 and April 2026, even with “minimal growth” in its engineering staff, all thanks to the technology.
During the company’s second-quarter earnings call, Arison said that the actual multiple was 3.5 times human production, but that he had previously said 2.5 because they thought the larger increase sounded “unreasonable,” he said.
“Before GenAI, producing that much technical output would have required roughly 200 additional engineers and approximately $60 million in annual cost,” Arison wrote.
Grindr measured the output through the amount of code shipped, according to the report.
Even if the company wanted to complete the tasks the old-fashioned way and hire the 200 engineers, Arison noted there has always been a “scarcity of exceptional engineering talent.”
He said the use of AI allows Grindr’s engineers to focus on the areas where it “most benefits from human creativity and judgment,” he wrote.
Arison is one of the few CEOs to share a number for how many employees it would take to complete the work his company is doing with AI, according to the report.
During the company’s earnings call, Arison also told a story about how when he first started working at Grindr, he described his vision for the company to his mentor, but said it would have required between 250 and 300 engineers.
Arison noted his mentor told him that needing all those engineers was “the old world,” and that AI coding would be able to do much of the work.
“It’s a really incredible outcome for us,” Arison said.
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