Next's AI spend up sixfold, but coding agents saved only 17% overall
Agent coding looks dramatic per task, yet Next's own CEO says the whole project saved just 17% of time; watch the full pilot round due February.
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UK retailer Next's AI spend rose from £200,000 last year to £1.2 million this year, and CEO Simon Wolfson says its coding agent pilots are showing early results.
One website share function would have taken about 10 working days with traditional coding plus assistive AI; a coding agent wrote it in 24 minutes and 29 seconds, plus roughly half a day to manage the agent and fix errors.
Wolfson himself adds the caveat: the whole project saved only 17% of the time, partly because the agent had to be built along the way. All figures are his own statements in a diginomica interview, not independently verified.