Musk says ‘coding will become meaningless’ … Indian IT stocks tumble

$15.8bn wiped off Indian IT market cap in a single day

Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, said advances in artificial intelligence (AI) would render human coding proficiency meaningless. Following the remarks, India’s leading IT companies saw more than 21 trillion won in market capitalization evaporate in a day, sending ripples through both capital and labor markets.

On the 12th (local time), The Times of India reported that markets reacted immediately as Musk’s comments spread. According to the report, shares of major Indian IT services firms such as Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and Infosys at one point plunged more than 5%, wiping out roughly 1.3 trillion rupees (about 21 trillion won) in market value in a single day. Citing overseas online communities, the outlet said debate has intensified, with developers lamenting that “skills built up over decades became useless overnight,” while others argued that “we’ve entered an era where imagination becomes capability.”

Earlier, Musk said in footage from an xAI town hall meeting released the previous day on X (formerly Twitter) that “by the end of this year, coding itself will probably become meaningless.” He predicted that AI would directly generate “machine code” that computers can execute immediately, without passing through human language. The analysis suggests that as an era in which AI communicates directly with machines opens in earnest, the intermediate process in which human developers write source code and compile it is disappearing.

Indeed, a report released on the 4th by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York put the unemployment rate for U.S. computer engineering graduates at 7.0%—higher than in humanities fields such as history (4.3%).

Park Sang-kyung, Hankyung.com reporter highseoul@hankyung.com