Stack Overflow and AI
Q&A volume in freefall; data licensing keeps it alive
Developers have abandoned Stack Overflow's forum for AI coding assistants, collapsing question volume to mid-2000s levels. The company (owned by Prosus) is monetizing its archive by licensing data to AI firms.
What happened
- Only ~3,862 questions were posted in Dec 2025, a ~78% year-over-year drop, versus a 2014 peak above 200,000 per month.
- Laid off ~28% of staff (100+ employees) in Oct 2023 as ChatGPT and Copilot eroded traffic.
- Signed data-licensing deals with OpenAI and Google in May 2024 to train models on its Q&A corpus.
- Owner Prosus reported Stack Overflow drove double-digit sequential revenue growth in its FY ending Sept 2025.
AI angle
AI assistants like ChatGPT and GitHub Copilot answer coding questions in-IDE, hollowing out the forum even as the same AI firms pay to license its historical answers.
Sources
AI company card
Stack Overflow
Q&A volume in freefall; data licensing keeps it alive. AI assistants like ChatGPT and GitHub Copilot answer coding questions in-IDE, hollowing out the forum even as the same AI firms pay to license its historical answers.
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