Every year for the last three years, we’ve shared major announcements from the mainstage of WeAreDevelopers World Congress in Berlin at pivotal moments in our journey. In 2023, we launched OverflowAI, our flagship AI initiative for our customers and enterprise clients, whereas final yr, we revealed our imaginative and prescient for the Knowledge as a Service model and high-quality, trusted knowledge because the forex that may outline the brand new period of the web. 2025 up to now has been a yr marked by significant experimentation and evolution for us as an organization and exploration of how we will proceed to be of service to the world’s technologists. Firstly of the yr, we together with our Head of Neighborhood Philippe Beaudette held our first ever live AMA (‘Ask Me Anything’) session, after we shared our plans to introduce new options and codecs of engagement for our customers, and listen to instantly from a few of our group members. In that very same spirit, in the present day on the WeAreDevelopers stage we unveiled our new imaginative and prescient, mission assertion, and the newest product updates for our public platform customers and enterprise clients. We wished to supply a little bit of a peek behind the scenes on our future and why Stack Overflow stays essentially the most very important supply for expertise fans world wide.
The Open Internet has had many transformations. Since its founding in 2008, Stack Overflow has had a entrance row seat to myriad shifts within the panorama—from the rise of cloud computing within the early 2010s, the rise of distant work throughout the pandemic, and now the GenAI period that started in late 2022 that has outlined not solely the expertise business however modified the face of society, communication, and public life since then. Over the past six months, we’ve approached our evolution with one query: “What’s the way forward for Stack Overflow in an AI world?” The best way that builders, especially ones at the beginning of their professional careers, have interaction with expertise and study to code is vastly totally different now in 2025 than in 2008 when our public platform was based. Not solely do technologists flip to an unlimited array of sources, from AI chat bots, on-line video platforms, and dialogue boards to search out options to their queries and sharpen their expertise, however the very definition of a developer has expanded. With these realities in thoughts, we’re waiting for how we will proceed to serve technologists throughout the globe.
As we speak onstage, we shared a sneak peek of the findings of our fifteenth annual Developer Survey, our flagship survey that polls our group on all subjects essential to those that code, which will probably be launched within the subsequent few weeks. We’ve requested our customers about their ideas on and use of AI, and a placing sample has emerged. For the third yr in a row, we have seen the variety of builders utilizing AI instruments of their workflow proceed to extend yr over yr, with 83% saying they use or plan to make use of AI instruments of their growth course of this yr, a rise over 2024 (76%). Nevertheless, the dearth of belief in AI instruments additionally continues to rise with 46% of respondents saying they don’t belief the output of AI, up considerably from 26% final yr.
With using AI now ubiquitous and ‘AI slop’ quickly changing the content material we see on-line, this belief hole is the place we expect Stack Overflow can play a task. Our renewed imaginative and prescient and function shifting ahead is to be the world’s most significant supply for technologists. By offering a trusted human intelligence layer within the age of AI, we imagine we will serve technologists with our mission to domesticate group, energy studying, and unlock progress.
Stack Overflow’s journey over time has by no means been a easy one or simple to outline. We’re most identified by our origins as a query and reply platform by and for technical specialists, however in 2010 we expanded to incorporate B2C choices with the bigger Stack Change community and our Careers product to assist builders discover their subsequent job, adopted by our transfer into the Enterprise in 2018 with Stack Overflow for Groups, our inner model of our public providing to assist groups collaborate. Now within the age of AI publish 2023, we’ve entered our subsequent section and lately launched our Knowledge Solutions providing that companions like OpenAI, Google Cloud, and Moveworks make the most of to energy their AI options with our trusted and correct corpus of knowledge. With this evolution and the tempo of change displaying no signal of slowing down, we realized a radical simplification of our model structure was so as. Our public platform, together with the Stack Change community, will now be identified merely as Stack Overflow, whereas Stack Overflow Enterprise will comprise our Advertisements enterprise, Stack Inner (previously often called Stack Overflow for Groups), and Stack Knowledge Licensing (previously often called Information Options).
Along with evolving our model structure, we’re additionally actively experimenting with and increasing modes of engagement past Q&A for our public platform to mirror our new mission: to help ALL the builders of the longer term in an AI world—with readability, pace, and humanity. It’s about displaying up in a manner that displays who we’re in the present day, and the place we’re headed tomorrow.
One of many methods we’re activating on the Domesticate group a part of our mission is to introduce options comparable to Neighborhood Exercise and resurfacing and refreshing older and fewer used options comparable to Chat. Neighborhood Exercise is a brand new characteristic we’re experimenting with that shows lively customers on-line and the variety of customers who’ve requested questions within the final 24 hours. You may consider it because the heartbeat of the group, offering a real-time view into simply how lively and engaged the group is. As we proceed to experiment, you’ll see Neighborhood Exercise broaden to extra areas of the positioning and have extra methods to have interaction in the neighborhood.
Chat is a real-time conversational area for builders to unravel and socialize in a extra informal manner than our conventional Q&A format. Chat has been on our web site for ages, however we’ve made it extra accessible to extra folks and introduced it entrance and heart.
As we broaden the positioning to help the profession progress and steady training of technologists worldwide, we wish to make it simple to navigate to wherever you might want to go and Energy studying for individuals who go to our web site. Many people start our seek for solutions with AI instruments, however usually as soon as we get a solution, there’s an absence of certainty that these solutions might be trusted or maybe the solutions you’re receiving are incomplete or lack the suitable context. Stackoverflow.ai is a brand new approach to help that discovery and study alongside the way in which. This AI-powered search and discovery software supplies a well-known, pure language expertise, but it surely’s enriched with clear connections to trusted and human-verified information from Stack Overflow and the Stack Change Community. You may ask questions, validate AI solutions and dive deep into technical subjects by related content material, or select a handy path to attach with the group – all with step-by-step steering.
We’ve additionally lately launched Coding Challenges to our web site! These new challenges characterize a brand new, enjoyable manner for builders to degree up by tackling fascinating puzzles and incomes recognition to your expertise and creativity. It’s a rewarding approach to apply and broaden your information with the Stack Overflow group in an area that celebrates various and distinctive approaches.
As AI turns into extra pervasive, the efficacy of AI programs will more and more depend upon entry to verifiable and correct information. That can prolong to job alternatives too as folks search for steering on thrilling profession prospects, and because of this we purpose to Unlock progress for individuals who come to Stack Overflow or use our merchandise.
That is the place Stack Inner (presently Stack Overflow for Teams), the non-public Stack Overflow for enterprises, comes into the image. As we speak, we launched three new capabilities for Stack Inner that make it the important information intelligence layer for AI instruments and options inside organizations.
The primary is Information Ingestion. At the moment in pilot with a number of of our massive enterprise companions, Information Ingestion converts high-value content material from instruments like SharePoint, Confluence, Google Drive, and others into structured, trusted information inside a Stack Inner occasion. It’s designed to eradicate silos, speed up onboarding, and scale institutional knowledge.
With builders exchanging helpful info throughout the enterprise in quite a lot of instruments, we wish to make human-validated and trusted information from Stack Inner accessible wherever they’re working. We’ve lately launched quite a lot of new Connectors that may help this together with the Stack Overflow Connector for Microsoft Graph, which indexes and surfaces trusted Stack Inner content material into the Microsoft 365 ecosystem. Moreover, our model new integration with Backstage.io permits customers to ask a query instantly of their portal, entry a devoted Stack Overflow web page with searchable tags and customers, and get search outcomes in step with the Stack Inner platform. Our integration with Moveworks brings an installable Stack Overflow agent to Moveworks’ AI Agent Market that customers can work together with their Stack Inner occasion utilizing pure language.
Lastly, we shared {that a} bi-directional MCP (mannequin context protocol) server is on the horizon. MCP is a layer constructed on high of the Stack Inner APIs that allows LLMs and AI brokers to attach with knowledge sources and work together with clients’ Stack Inner knowledge extra effectively. Keep tuned for extra updates on this and Information Ingestion!
As our merchandise and platform have morphed over time, our audiences have grown alongside them. Nevertheless, this enlargement has resulted in our model changing into stretched and eroding its clear id and consistency. Over the past a number of months, we’ve been laborious at work internally exploring what a refreshed visible id for us may appear to be. As we speak onstage we shared a preview of a few of the instructions we’ve been contemplating. Moreover, within the spirit of conserving group at our heart, we are also asking you—our world group of customers—to weigh in! Explore the options and vote now.
At Stack Overflow we imagine now we have a pioneering function to play in shifting the dialog across the significance of attribution to our bigger information communities and trusted sources of knowledge to safe a future with sustainable technological progress. By bringing collectively high quality knowledge and human expertise to create sustainable, very important communities, we will construct a way forward for Stack Overflow and the web collectively that drives innovation and progress for all.
