a16z: lawyers adopt AI 108x faster than IT

According to a16z, sales and recruiting grew 41x since February, marketing 26x, while engineers grew just 5x — though their starting user base was far larger.

Author: Michael Kokin ·

a16z shared interesting growth stats for Codex users by profession. Since February this year, the fastest-adopting group by far is lawyers — 108x growth.

The rest of the top
- Sales — 41x
- Recruiting — 41x
- Marketing — 26x
- Healthcare — 24x

For comparison, engineers and developers grew "only" 5x.

Why the gap is deceptive
Don't forget the low-base effect: the chart shows *relative* growth. IT folks already had a massive user base to begin with, so their 5x in absolute numbers is a huge volume. Lawyers and salespeople, on the other hand, started from almost zero back in February.

Still, the trend is obvious: AI is breaking out of IT departments right now and starting to genuinely change classic office document work.

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