The global population of cloud-native developers has topped 21 million, but the headcount tells only part of the story. Artificial intelligence is changing what those developers build and how open-source projects absorb their work.

Fresh research is putting numbers on that shift. The latest State of Cloud Native Development report from the Cloud Native Computing Foundation and SlashData Ltd. counts more than 21 million practitioners, or 41% of developers worldwide. Yet that figure likely misses many people who rely on cloud-native infrastructure without knowing it, according to Bob Killen (pictured, right), director of technical program management at CNCF.

“The big thing is it actually might be undercounting a significant amount of them,” Killen said. “Because there’s a very large amount of people that are essentially consuming cloud-native applications without even realizing it.”

Killen and Liam Bollmann-Dodd (left), principal market research consultant at SlashData, spoke with theCUBE’s Rebecca Knight at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon NA, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed the latest State of Cloud Native Development findings, AI adoption, the strain on open-source maintainers and the shift toward cost discipline. (* Disclosure below.)

AI adoption separates cloud-native developers from the pack

The report’s most striking finding concerns AI. About 75% of cloud-native developers use AI in some form, compared with only about 55% of other developers, Bollmann-Dodd noted. The gap mirrors a broader trend of agentic AI pushing Kubernetes into a second act.

“It’s a massive difference,” Bollmann-Dodd said. “So somehow being cloud native enables you and your organization and your personal stack to do AI in all its forms.”

Maintainers face a flood of AI-made code

The same AI wave is straining the people who keep the ecosystem running. Sustainability dominated the Maintainer Summit ahead of KubeCon, as maintainers face a flood of pull requests frequently generated by agents, Killen explained.

“How do we as maintainers keep up with the flooding of PRs and issues and things like that?” Killen said. “Especially when many of them are frankly just slop. And the real frustrating part is they’ll be just good enough.”

Cost discipline is the next shift. Just as financial operations practices followed rising cloud bills, cloud-native developers will soon manage model and token spending closely, according to Bollmann-Dodd.

“I think token maxing is dead and it’s going to stay dead forever,” Bollmann-Dodd said. “And I think it’s going to become much more focused on how you spend your money and how you spend your tokens.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of KubeCon + CloudNativeCon NA:

(* Disclosure: The Linux Foundation sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither The Linux Foundation nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE