CodeROI Launches the CodeROI AI Agent: R&D Tax Credits, Section 174, and Software Capitalization on Your AI Spend
AI is expensive, and until now the money companies pour into it has been invisible to the tax incentives that reward software development. The CodeROI AI Agent changes that: deterministic, audit-ready evidence for AI-assisted development, agentic AI, and vibe coding alike, defensible down to the individual code change. CodeROI is not an AI platform. It is the system of record for software development in the AI era, and it effectively puts a rebate on your AI bill.
MCKINNEY, Texas, Sept. 2, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- CodeROI (CodeROI.com) is excited to announce the launch of the CodeROI AI Agent, a first-of-its-kind product that finally lets companies capture the R&D tax credit, Section 174 treatment, and software capitalization on their AI spend, making AI development meaningfully more affordable. Everyone is hunting for discounts on their AI bill right now. CodeROI has arrived to deliver one, and it is completely passive: no timesheets, no surveys, no change to how teams or their AI tools work. As the evidence accrues, the savings can show up every quarter through lower estimated tax payments instead of six to twelve months after filing. Available now in the United States and Canada.
Based on its review of publicly available platforms as of August 2026, CodeROI believes it is the first platform to connect all three benefits to separately measured human and AI-agent development activity at the level of each individual code change.
AI is writing the code. Nobody is writing it down.
Google's CEO has said more than 30 percent of the company's new code is written by AI, Microsoft's CEO has cited a similar range, and most professional developers now use AI daily, from AI-assisted engineering to vibe coding to fully agentic AI that takes a task and hands back finished work on its own. But the IRS does not ask who, or what, wrote the code. To claim the R&D tax credit, deduct or capitalize development costs, or satisfy the IRS's new project-level R&D reporting that becomes mandatory for tax year 2026, a company still has to prove what was built, on which project, and at what cost. Human engineers leave a trail. AI leaves almost nothing a CFO or CPA can hand to an examiner, and every AI-written feature that ships without evidence is money a company may never be able to claim.
Can you claim R&D tax credits on AI spend? Until now, barely.
The traditional playbook for substantiating the credit is built on people: interviews, questionnaires, managers estimating how their teams spent the year. For AI it simply does not work, because you cannot interview an AI. And AI spend is not all development. The same accounts that write production software also summarize meetings and look up the weather, and a claim that sweeps in every AI dollar is indefensible.
The CodeROI AI Agent solves this with records, not opinions. It delineates AI development work from everything else, maps that work to your actual projects, evaluates eligibility action by action across the development lifecycle, and measures the effort the AI spent on each individual code change, so the percentage of AI spend that qualifies is a computed fact, not a guess. The result is granular audit defense at the individual code change level. Deterministic all the way down: no estimates, no extrapolations, no AI black box rendering an opinion that will never stand up in an audit.
How much is the R&D tax credit on AI spend worth?
Enough to change the economics of AI adoption. American companies claim more than $32 billion in R&D tax credits every year, and startups can offset up to $500,000 a year in payroll taxes. The AI Agent is additive, not one or the other: companies keep capturing the benefit on their engineers' wages exactly as before, and the AI spend now stacks on top, attached to the same projects. Total credit claims, Section 174 amounts, and capitalized software development under GAAP and IFRS can grow significantly, because each project now carries both the payroll and the AI dollars behind it. In effect, a rebate on the AI bill.
Timing is unforgiving. Tax year 2026 is both the first year most companies must prove their R&D project by project and the first year a large share of that R&D was written by machines, and returns stay open to examination for years afterward. CodeROI operates off contemporaneous data, meaning evidence captured while the work happened, rather than reconstructing a pretty story on wobbly legs a year later, which is what most audit defenses turn out to be. It captures from the day you connect, forward. Companies that wait will be rebuilding the AI era from memory.
To be clear: CodeROI is not an AI platform
CodeROI wants this stated plainly, because the distinction is the entire point. CodeROI does not use AI to write tax narratives, estimate expenses, or guess what probably happened. The platform records development activity as it occurs, and the same facts always produce the same answer. What CodeROI announced today is support for AI development, not adoption of AI methods. AI writes the code. CodeROI writes it down.
"The IRS does not care whether a person or an agent wrote the code. It asks you to prove what was built, on which project, and at what cost," said Taylor Meadows, CPA, Founder and CEO of CodeROI. "Companies adopting AI agents are creating value faster than they are creating evidence. Starting today, that gap closes. The AI does the work, and CodeROI writes it down while it happens."
"Generative AI is extraordinary at creating and exactly wrong for record keeping. A record has to say the same thing every time you look at it, especially years later with an examiner in the room," said Anna Meadows, CTO of CodeROI. "That is why our evidence layer is deterministic and always will be. The AI Agent extends that standard to AI-written code, so companies can go as fast as AI development allows and still hold a record that stands up."
Does CodeROI replace your CPA or your tools?
No. CodeROI is purely additive. Teams keep their ticketing system, tools, and workflow, and everything CodeROI produces is based on what actually happened in the development lifecycle: actuals, not estimates. It does not replace your CPA; it automates the client's side of the work, collecting and organizing the evidence, and hands the CPA everything needed to file. CodeROI partners with many CPA organizations. Bring your own, or CodeROI can recommend one.
Availability
The CodeROI AI Agent is available now in the United States and Canada as part of the CodeROI platform. Setup is a connection, not a project: link CodeROI to where your code lives and evidence starts building the same day. See it working on your company's own code: schedule a demo at CodeROI.com, where you can also estimate your potential credit with the pricing calculator.
About CodeROI
CodeROI is a deterministic, data-first software platform that automates software development tax incentives, software capitalization, and software development compliance. Patented and SOC 2 Type 2 certified, CodeROI generates an evidence-based record directly from the software development lifecycle, helping organizations replace estimates with actuals, improve audit readiness, and produce more defensible financial and tax reporting for R&D tax credits, the IRS's new project-level reporting, software capitalization under U.S. and international accounting standards (GAAP and IFRS), and Canada's SR&ED program. CodeROI analyzes how the software was built, never needing to read or understand the company's proprietary code itself. Engineers keep engineering. The evidence builds itself. CodeROI is headquartered in McKinney, Texas. Visit CodeROI.com.
Sources
- IRS Form 6765 and Instructions (Rev. December 2025), Section G business component reporting, mandatory for tax years beginning in 2026 for most filers.
- Alphabet Q1 2025 earnings call, Sundar Pichai, share of new code at Google that is AI-generated (over 30 percent).
- Satya Nadella, public remarks, April 2025, share of code in Microsoft repositories that is AI-generated (20 to 30 percent).
- IRS Statistics of Income, annual corporate R&D credit claims exceeding $32 billion.
- IRC Section 6501, assessment periods: three years generally, six years for substantial understatement.
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