Why Ai Parallelization Will Be One Of The Biggest Challenges Of 2026

During nan California Gold Rush of nan mid-1800s, nan group who benefited astir were not those who came West to excavation wealth retired of nan ground, but those who sold them nan devices to do that.

Rob Whiteley believes that nan statement he runs, Coder, is positioned to beryllium a “picks and shovels” institution for nan awesome AI unreserved of nan 2020s.

Whiteley, Coder’s CEO, discussed nan evolving scenery of AI and improvement devices — and his company’s caller unfastened root contribution, Mux — successful this On nan Road section of The New Stack Makers, hosted by TNS Publisher Alex Williams and recorded astatine AWS re:Invent successful Las Vegas.

As a 25-year seasoned of nan tech world, Whiteley calls our existent AI infinitesimal nan craziest he’s ever seen, successful position of sheer velocity of change.

“The 1 point changeless is: Developers are ever adopting caller tools,” he noted, adding, “What I’m seeing is unit from these caller level teams to quickly bless those devices and make them portion of nan stack.”

Adding to nan unit connected level teams, he said: “The days of telling developers ‘no’ are gone.“

The unreserved to adopt AI-based tools, he said, carries echoes of nan modulation to unreality native, erstwhile companies tried to “lift and shift” their aged workloads and ways of doing things onto nan caller unreality platforms. Just arsenic unreality autochthonal companies emerged, building from scratch connected nan caller tech, Whiteley said, truthful excessively are AI native entities apt to emerge.

“What I fear, is that spread betwixt those that are getting worth and those that aren’t is widening astatine an alarming rate, and truthful we’re going to extremity up pinch nan haves and person nots, wherever truthful galore companies are gonna propulsion up their hands and say, ‘ I don’t cognize really to get worth from AI,’” he said.

“That scares maine a small bit, because past you’re gonna get these companies that conscionable leap guardant successful capability. And whenever you person a disruptive technology, there’s ever this skills gap.”

Why Developers Are Becoming ‘Team Managers’

As a student of tech history, Whiteley said, he’s worried that companies are presently not investing heavy capable successful helping their workers build AI-related skills.

Having a platform engineering squad successful place, he said, tin thief an statement wring use from AI tools. But moreover that, he said, isn’t going acold enough.

“There’s 2 things you person to deliberation about,” he said. “There’s nan developer is naturally, organically, going to put [AI tools] successful their workflow. Then there’s going to beryllium nan backend institution that tin let it aliases not. And truthful successful a batch of cases, they’re conscionable going to commencement blocking tools.”

Cursor, for instance, often gets blocked by companies outright, he said: “And truthful present is this imaginable to toggle shape nan measurement you create software, and we’re not going to fto you usage it because it’s not secure, aliases it can’t beryllium governed.”

It’s each portion of nan increasing problem of achieving AI parallelization successful nan enterprise: figuring retired why and really to tally aggregate AI coding agents safely and securely, astatine scale.

“There’s an emerging inclination that I’m seeing my astir progressive customers doing, wherever they will rotation up 10 instances of an supplier — Claude Code, Cursor, inheritance agents,” Whiteley said. “And each of them are successful their ain isolated environments, but they’re identical to each other, truthful we’ll conscionable rotation up 10 of nan aforesaid thing, and past we’re going to provender them nan aforesaid prompt.”

In those cases, nan agents will create 10 unsocial solutions; nan customer will prime nan 1 they want and propulsion nan remainder away.

At nan gait agentic AI is moving and nan unit to get worth from it, Whiteley said, this believe is wrong a twelvemonth of going mainstream. As a result, he noted, “parallelization and conscionable nan full maintaining authorities of your agents is going to beryllium astir apt 1 of nan apical 5 problems we look successful 2026.”

In an statement that uses agentic AI, individual developers are really squad managers, he said, building and search several— even hundreds— of agents. Companies haven’t afloat grasped that yet.

“In a unreserved to get nan exertion up and running, a batch of companies are bypassing nan benignant of tried-and-true things they would put successful spot for a quality developer,” Whiteley said. “They’re not putting successful spot for its agentic equivalent.”

Introducing Mux, a Coding Agent Multiplexer

To thief developers support aggregate AI agents, Coder has announced Mux, an unfastened root desktop coding supplier multiplexer.

Mux “is really conscionable calved retired of nan thought that for a batch of developers, nan halfway of gravity is moving distant from a accepted codification editor, to much of a chat interface, wherever I’m conscionable going to beryllium keeping my virtual squad connected boil.” Whiteley said. “I conscionable want them perpetually producing. Now, nan 2nd it produces code, I’m going to unfastened it up successful an editor and cheque nan work.

The caller level tin beryllium a complement alternatively than a replacement to a developer’s IDE, he added: “We needed a abstracted interface for managing agentic output than from really checking nan activity of that agent. They’re 2 different tools.”

One of Whiteley’s squad members, he said, calls Mux a shovel, arsenic opposed to an excavator. “Just because you person an excavator that tin move monolithic amounts of Earth doesn’t mean you’re going to beryllium capable to spell do your backyard pinch it. And conscionable for illustration you’re not going to want to spell clear an full section pinch a small manus shovel. They’re conscionable 2 different levels of benignant of work.

“Agents excavate code. They nutrient a batch of it, and past you person to bring it into a refined area, wherever you spell done it pinch a much shovel-like tool.”

Check retired nan afloat section for much astir Mux and astir why fears of a developer surplus successful nan AI era are unfounded.

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