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Alex Lieberman

Alex Lieberman

Co-Founder at Tenex

@businessbarista
enterprisefuture-of-workbusinessagentstenex

About Alex Lieberman

Alex Lieberman is co-founder of Tenex, an applied AI partner that helps large enterprises become AI-native. He previously co-founded Morning Brew, the business newsletter he started with Austin Rief at the University of Michigan, which sold to Business Insider in 2020.

Tenex started about 18 months before his October 2026 Latent Space interview as an AI-powered dev shop, built on the idea that engineering is the "canary in the coal mine" for AI. As customers moved up market, they asked for broader AI transformation. Tenex now has 75 people in New York City, 90% of them engineers or AI strategists, and half of its customers are Fortune 2000 companies. The other half are mid-market companies with $100 to $500 million in revenue.

Lieberman is best known in AI circles for Tenex's compensation model: engineers are paid on story points delivered rather than hours, on the view that AI widens the gap between the most and least productive engineers.

Career Highlights

  • Co-founder of Morning Brew, sold to Business Insider in 2020
  • Co-founder of Tenex, an AI transformation and AI engineering partner based in New York City
  • Built Tenex to 75 people, half its customers in the Fortune 2000

Notable Positions

On Paying Engineers for Output

Lieberman argues AI amplifies individual ability, so pay should follow output. At Tenex, the gap between the highest- and lowest-paid engineers is about 4x. AI strategists are paid on customer retention and growth, which he says counters the obvious risks of padded estimates and low-quality code. The open problem is paying for non-coding work such as architecture and client meetings.

On the Enterprise AI Adoption Ladder

From roughly 100 enterprises Tenex talks to, Lieberman estimates 90% have rolled out Claude or Codex, about 60% have invested in training and enablement, about half have rolled out coding agents, and only about 5% run agents in production for non-engineering work. He sees data permissioning (RBAC) as a major blocker for CIOs and CISOs, and Tenex has built its own gateway product for it.

On Vertical AI and Rebuilding SaaS

He is generally bearish on vertical AI apps such as Harvey and OpenEvidence, because buyers now expect one-of-one software and frontier models keep improving. He is also skeptical of large enterprises ripping out core systems like Salesforce or SAP, arguing the risk is too high and in-house software adds maintenance load outside the core business.

On Jobs and Reskilling

Lieberman pushes back on framing job displacement as something that only happens to people. Reskilling is the employer's job, he says, but also the employee's, who should honestly assess how replaceable their role is and act on it.

Key Quotes

  • "AI is really just a leveraged bet on a human's intellect and work ethic." (on paying engineers for output)
  • "Most enterprises that we talk to that have, let's just say, more than a thousand employees do not have an agent in production that is doing work that is not building software." (on enterprise adoption)

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