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Vercel CEO Reports Coding Agents Are Re-Engaging Enterprise Leadership in Development

Vercel CEO Guillermo Rauch reports that coding agents are driving a return to active development among enterprise leadership. Public company CEOs are using tools like Claude Code to ship software directly, a trend Rauch describes as the product-led growth of the enterprise. This shift makes infrastructure quality self-evident to the entire organization, as legacy software can no longer be obscured from leadership.
Fast mode speed
2.5x faster
Supported models
Opus 4.6 and Opus 4.7
Fast mode input cost
$30 per million tokens
Fast mode output cost
$150 per million tokens
Gateway endpoint
https://ai-gateway.vercel.sh

To support this, Vercel has enabled Anthropic-compatible endpoints in its AI Gateway (a unified entry point for managing AI model requests). This integration builds on the Vercel platform skills previously launched for agents, providing the monitoring and execution traces required for high-stakes autonomous workflows. By routing agent requests through the gateway, teams can maintain visibility into token usage and performance.

Organizations can now configure Claude Code to use the gateway by setting the ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL to the Vercel endpoint. This setup enables features like fast mode for Opus 4.6 and Opus 4.7, which increases response speeds by 2.5x. These capabilities allow leaders to safely experiment with agent-native infrastructure commands to manage deployments and marketplace integrations without manual dashboard navigation.

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Guillermo Rauch
Guillermo Rauch
@rauchg
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Unclear if a durable trend, but CEOs and CTOs are back to coding with a fury, thanks to coding agents. I have public company CEOs sliding into my DMs (and “InMail”) telling me about falling in love with shipping software again thanks to Claude Code and Vercel. “Dream accounts” that we always wanted to work with, where in the past the C-suite would hardly understand the infrastructure until much later in the game. Coding agents are the ultimate PLG-fication of the enterprise. Bad, legacy software can’t hide anymore. The stack that works is self-evident to the entire organization, from intern to CEO.

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Still wondering? A few quick answers below.

Vercel AI Gateway is a unified entry point that allows teams to route, monitor, and manage requests to multiple AI models through a single interface. It provides centralized observability for token usage and execution traces, which is critical for managing autonomous agents in production environments.

To use Claude Code with Vercel, you must configure your environment variables to point the ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL to the Vercel AI Gateway endpoint. You also need to provide your AI Gateway API key as the ANTHROPIC_AUTH_TOKEN while ensuring the standard ANTHROPIC_API_KEY is set to an empty string.

Fast mode is a configuration for Claude Opus 4.6 and 4.7 that prioritizes response speed, delivering outputs up to 2.5x faster than standard mode. While it maintains the same model quality, it incurs a higher per-token cost and is billed as extra usage even if you have a subscription.

Yes, users with a Claude subscription can route their requests through the Vercel AI Gateway by configuring custom headers with their gateway API key. This allows teams to benefit from Vercel's monitoring and observability features while utilizing their existing Anthropic subscription for model access.

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