AI is making engineers faster, but nobody is checking the bill or the quality, says AI Israeli CEO

Companies are racing to give their software engineers AI coding tools, but most cannot say whether the spending is improving their products, according to Liad Elidan, co-founder and CEO of Israeli startup Milestone, which was built to answer that question.Elidan made the case on the Jerusalem Post Business and Innovation podcast, since his company works with enterprises that employ 200 or more engineers, linking AI usage, engineering output, code quality and governance to business metrics.AI lets teams finish far more work, faster, Elidan said, but nobody is checking whether it is the right work or good work. "The gains, even doing it blindly, are so high that you better do it," he added. "But you'll need to have governance for the software development lifecycle."Milestone tracks cycle time, ties individual tickets to AI use, models and cost, and measures how long code survives in production before it is rewritten.Given free choice, engineers pick the most powerful and expensive AI model even for trivial jobs, Elidan said. "It is a huge waste," he highlighted. "The best engineers are the laziest. If I can choose a slow car or a fast car and I need to drive from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, I'm going to take the fast one, if it's free."He cited industry stories of an engineer who ran up some $20…