AI begins to infiltrate various industries: After "programming automation," AI giants are heading towards "everything automation"

The explosive growth of AI programming tools is pushing the entire technology industry towards a grander ambition: to automate every aspect of human life using natural language instructions. This competition is no longer limited to coding but is aimed at the comprehensive restructuring of knowledge work.

Anthropic's Claude Code, OpenAI's Codex, and the startup Cursor are rapidly expanding the boundaries of "AI programming assistants"—from writing work reports and coordinating family schedules to applying for mortgages and organizing medical records, AI agents are infiltrating the daily lives of ordinary users with almost zero barriers. OpenAI's Chief Revenue Officer Denise Dresser referred to the transformation in enterprise AI usage over the past 30 days as a "wildfire moment," stating that it represents a "fundamental shift."

This transformation has left its mark on the capital markets. According to The Wall Street Journal, the potential of related technologies has sparked deep reflections among investors and corporate executives about the reshaping of the industry, triggering a market sell-off of up to $1 trillion. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of layoffs have been attributed to the accelerated penetration of AI.

From "writing code" to "doing everything": The boundaries of AI agents are disappearing

The starting point of this transformation is the rapid popularization of AI-assisted programming tools.

Cursor launched its tool in 2023, allowing non-engineers to build software, applications, and websites without knowledge of C or Python, thus ushering in what the industry calls the "vibe-coding" era. Jensen Huang, CEO of NVIDIA, has publicly called it his "favorite" AI tool.

But programming is just the entry point. Nick Turley, head of ChatGPT at OpenAI, stated that the long-term vision for ChatGPT has always been to become a "super assistant" that "can really help you get things done." Felix Rieseberg, head of engineering for the non-technical task feature Cowork at Anthropic, defines the target users of these tools as "anyone who needs to get work done on a computer."

Venture capitalist Tomasz Tunguz is a typical embodiment of this trend. He uses AI agents to create charts, write blogs, and make presentations, spending as much as $100,000 a year on AI tools. He stated that all his travel bookings, vacation planning, email handling, shopping lists, and even music recommendations are done through AI.

A $100 billion market emerges: Corporate contracts are the real gold mine

Behind this competition is a massive business opportunity taking shape.

Anthropic and OpenAI currently charge about $200 per month for their highest-level AI tools. In February of this year, Anthropic disclosed that Claude Code's annual revenue had reached $2.5 billion; OpenAI has not disclosed specific revenue figures for Codex but stated that Codex currently has over 2 million weekly active users, with traffic increasing eightfold in the past two months Tunguz estimates that AI agents could bring about $36 billion in annual revenue to the consumer market in the near future, but he also points out that the real profit source will be enterprise-level contracts—this is a market opportunity far larger than consumer chatbots.

Dresser from OpenAI stated, "When you think about the future of knowledge work, this is a multi-trillion-dollar opportunity for businesses. You could almost say that as long as you can think of it and describe what you want, you can build it."

For OpenAI and Anthropic, winning the non-technical user market is particularly urgent—both companies are accelerating their initial public offerings, which could land as early as later this year.

Burning Money for Market: Can the Subsidy War Continue?

Behind the rapid growth is an expensive market competition.

According to The Wall Street Journal, OpenAI and Anthropic are currently charging far below the actual operating costs for platform usage, similar to the strategy used by Uber and Lyft in their early years to capture the market with extremely low fares. For example, Anthropic offers a subscription plan at $200 per month, providing premium users with token limits worth up to $1,000.

Cursor's annual revenue has now exceeded $2 billion, doubling within about three months, with the employee count growing to around 400 and the latest valuation reaching $29.3 billion. Despite ongoing claims from the outside that the rise of "Cursor killers" like Claude Code and Codex will end this company, its growth momentum continues.

Thibault Sottiaux, head of Codex, admitted that growth itself has brought enormous operational pressure. In mid-March, an unexpected surge in user numbers caused technical failures for Codex. "We have to constantly build new data centers while investing in improving efficiency and expanding the underlying infrastructure," he said.

Disruption Has Arrived: From Programmers to Doctors, No One is Exempt

The impact of this technological wave has spread beyond the software engineering community.

Claude Code quickly gained popularity after its official release in early 2025, especially after Anthropic launched an updated model last November, leading to viral spread and accelerating diffusion beyond software engineers starting in December. Its head, Boris Cherny, stated that Claude Code was initially just a personal project he started after joining Anthropic in the fall of 2024, "I started by building this product for myself."

In February of this year, Claude Code held its first anniversary celebration, with attendees including a practicing cardiologist from Belgium—who used Claude Code to build an application to help patients navigate the medical process—and a lawyer from California, who automated the building permit approval process using the tool.

Cherny candidly expressed the impact of this transformation: "For me, programming is the new literacy, but fortunately, learning to program is much easier than learning to read now because you don't need to practice; the tools do it for you." But I don't want to sugarcoat it—this will be very disruptive