Elon Musk Predicts the “Death” of Coding by Late 2026 as AI Shifts to Direct Binary Generation

The tech billionaire’s prediction comes as other industry giants accelerate their adoption of AI-assisted development.

RMN Digital Corporate Desk
New Delhi | February 12. 2026

Elon Musk has issued a stark warning to the tech industry, predicting that coding as a profession will effectively end by the conclusion of 2026. In a video circulating online, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO suggested that developers may not even “bother doing coding” by the end of this year because AI will soon generate binary machine code directly.

Musk argues that AI systems are becoming capable of creating much more efficient binary than any traditional compiler. This shift would bypass the entire conventional software development process—eliminating the need for writing source code, compiling it, and then converting it into machine code. Instead, the gap between an idea and its execution could “hit zero,” where a person simply imagines a concept and the machine births it into existence.

The tech billionaire’s prediction comes as other industry giants accelerate their adoption of AI-assisted development. Microsoft recently tasked its engineers with testing Claude Code alongside GitHub Copilot, and Nvidia has granted its staff access to OpenAI Codex. These industry shifts coincide with recent market volatility, as Rs 1.3 lakh crore was wiped off Indian IT stocks, with major players like TCS and Infosys seeing price plunges of up to 5%.

Beyond the world of software, Musk also revealed a strategic pivot for SpaceX, announcing a delay for the company’s Mars mission. The aerospace firm is now prioritizing the development of a self-sustaining city on the Moon, a goal Musk believes can be reached in less than 10 years, compared to the two decades required for a similar project on Mars. While the Moon is the new top priority, Musk emphasized that the mission remains to “extend consciousness and life as we know it to the stars”.