Just the headlines. One line per month. The shift that mattered most to working designers.
Series A–B teams hire one AI Creative Director and zero mid-level designers. Agent operators fill the gap.
Series A/B teams hire their first AI Creative Director instead of their fifth Senior Product Designer.
Series A to B teams hire their first AI Creative Director and build pods around agents, not around designers.
57 synthesized monthsin the data layer. Stage breakdowns (Starter / Scaler / Titan) are available for 2026 only — earlier months show under the All segment but won’t appear under stage filters until the design-context pipeline runs further back.
Series A–C teams build a thin Creative Direction layer over an agent stack and hire design engineers to ship. Mid-level execution roles compress.
Series A to C teams hire their first AI Creative Director. Mid-level IC design roles thin out. Design Engineers own the agent-to-code path.
Series A–C teams formalize the orchestration layer. New title: someone owns the agent stack and the brief-to-ship pipeline.
First design system, first real governance debate
Design system becomes agent rulebook
First design system, agent-accelerated, brand rules required
First design system, AI-augmented from day one
First design system, now it ships real code