Topic
19 facts from 1 episode, in date order. These are what speakers said on the shows, each linked to the moment it was said. They aren't independently verified.
2026
Alex Lieberman says about half of Tenex's customers are Fortune 2000 companies and half are mid-market firms with 100 to 500 million dollars in revenue.
“50% of our comp our customers are fortune 2,000, and then 50% are mid-market, doing a hundred to 500 million in revenue”
2026
Alex Lieberman says Tenex has about 75 employees, 90% of whom are engineers or AI strategists.
“Today, the business is at, uh, seventy five people, um, 90% of those, uh, employees are either engineers or AI strategists”
2026
Alex Lieberman says the pay gap between Tenex's highest and lowest paid engineers is about four times.
“there's a very wide dispersion in earning capacity between the highest paid engineer at Tenex and the lowest paid engineer at Tenex. It's probably something around four x difference”
2026
CJ Hess says Tenex engineers' output roughly doubled this year, a period he dates from the release of Opus 4.5 in December.
“it's been, like, a two x increase this year, in particular. Um, I think, basically, if you think of December as the, like, Opus four five moment”
2026
CJ Hess says Tenex's team still uses Codex for computer-use tasks, alongside Opus 5.5 as the main driver.
“I think a lot of the team still reaches for tools like Codex when we need to do something maybe more in the computer use world.”
2026
Alex Lieberman estimates that about 90% of the enterprises Tenex talks to have rolled out Claude or Codex to employees.
“of the, you know, let's call it a hundred enterprises we're talking to today, 90% have roled rolled out, e- e- either Claude or Codex to their employees.”
2026
Alex Lieberman estimates that about 60% of enterprises have moved on to training and enablement for general-purpose AI tools.
“actually teaching people how to use it, like, training and enablement, which, like, never gets the love that it should get, but is arguably more important or as important as the technology itself. I would say that's at, like, 60%.”
2026
Alex Lieberman says only about 50% of enterprises have rolled out coding agents, well below the 70 to 80% most people guess.
“most people are like, it has to be seventy or 80%. The number is closer to 50%.”
2026
Alex Lieberman says only about 5% of large enterprises have agents in production doing work other than building software.
“the biggest diffusion gap is from, like, raw intelligence to enterprise usage, is agents in production for non-engineering work drops to, like, 5%”
2026
Alex Lieberman says controlling data access with role-based access control has become a nightmare for chief information officers and chief information security officers as employees get AI tools.
“permissioning and, uh, like, RBAC, uh, basically, as every employee in a company has Claude or they have Codex, and they need access to certain data, it has turned into an absolute nightmare for CIOs and CISOs”
2026
Alex Lieberman says he and CJ Hess are generally bearish on AI products built for specific industries or functions.
“we were generally expression expressing an overall bearishness with vertical-specific AI solutions in different functions or industries”
Undated
CJ Hess says he was the first hire at Tenex, possibly before the company name was settled.
“I was actually the first hire. Um, I don't even know if Alex and Armand had the name Tenex quite yet”
Undated
Alex Lieberman says Tenex started about eighteen months before the recording as an AI-powered development shop.
“we started Tenex eighteen months ago, when we started the business, really, we started as, like, an AI-powered dev shop”
Undated
Alex Lieberman says Tenex's AI strategists are rewarded for customer retention and growth, which balances engineers' output-based pay.
“where AI strategists are incentivized for, like, customer retention and growth”
Undated
CJ Hess says Tenex's MetaHarness is a structured set of documentation inside a code repository plus a command-line tool that models use to drive the work.
“a very structured set of documentation within a repo, and then a CLI that's around it”
Undated
CJ Hess says Tenex requires its AI agents to log their decisions and activity in a standard way that is checked into the repository.
“we have a very opinionated way on how agents will go and log their decisions and log what they're doing and just keep track of what they're up to”
Undated
CJ Hess says Tenex reviews its story point criteria at least once a quarter to account for improving models.
“I would say, at least once a quarter, we kinda sit down and evaluate, like, what is our criteria for these story points?”
Undated
Alex Lieberman says Tenex built its own customer relationship management system from scratch.
“even at Tenex, like, we, we like, we built our own, like, CRM from scratch.”
Undated
Alex Lieberman argues that rebuilding non-core software only makes sense if the savings justify the ongoing effort of maintaining it.
“is the size of the prize big enough to justify the cognitive load that is going to take from some amount of resource in your company to nurture something that is not core to your business?”
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