Thoughtworks Aims to End Legacy Gridlock with AI/works™ Platform

CHICAGO, IL – January 20, 2026 – Global technology consultancy Thoughtworks today launched AI/works™, an agentic AI development platform designed to confront one of the biggest obstacles in modern business: the chasm between cutting-edge AI ambitions and the reality of aging legacy systems. The new platform aims to dramatically accelerate technology modernization, promising to transform development cycles that once took years into projects completed in months.

For decades, enterprises have been weighed down by technical debt. Industry reports consistently show that organizations spend up to 80% of their IT budgets simply maintaining outdated systems, while over 70% of digital transformation initiatives stall due to these legacy bottlenecks. AI/works™ enters this challenging landscape with a bold proposition: to not only build new applications but to understand, renew, and continuously evolve the complex, often poorly documented systems that power global business.

Bridging the Legacy-AI Divide

The core challenge for most CIOs is not a lack of vision for AI, but the practical difficulty of integrating intelligent technologies with monolithic, decades-old infrastructure. These legacy systems, often running on mainframes or built with outdated code, were not designed for the scalability, modularity, and data fluidity required by modern AI. This incompatibility creates a gridlock, preventing companies from unlocking the value of their data and competing effectively.

AI/works™ tackles this head-on with a feature it calls AI-enabled reverse engineering. The platform is designed to interpret legacy applications—even without access to original source code—by analyzing executables, data flows, and system behavior. From this analysis, it generates structured “functional blueprints” that map out business rules, dependencies, and workflows. This automated discovery process mitigates the critical risk of lost institutional knowledge, a common problem as the engineers who built the original systems retire.

"Every CEO and CIO I meet is trying to unlock AI value inside the reality of their existing systems, not in idealized greenfield environments," said Mike Sutcliff, CEO of Thoughtworks, in the company's announcement. "AI/works™ is built for those conditions. It understands the systems organizations have, accelerates the systems they need next and keeps everything current as the landscape shifts."

To address the deepest layers of legacy technology, Thoughtworks has also formed a collaboration with Mechanical Orchard, enabling AI/works™ to support complex mainframe renewal projects. This partnership signals a commitment to tackling the most entrenched modernization challenges that many enterprises face.

A New Era for Software Economics?

Beyond just modernization, Thoughtworks is positioning AI/works™ as a tool to fundamentally alter the financial and operational models of software development. The platform is the foundation for the company's “3-3-3 delivery model,” an ambitious framework aiming to take an idea from concept to production within 90 days. This claim, along with promises of significant cost reductions and dramatic time-to-market improvements, represents a potential paradigm shift.

The industry is already moving in this direction. A recent Futurum Research report identified generative AI as the top driver for accelerating software delivery, with experts noting that AI is becoming core delivery infrastructure. AI/works™ operationalizes this trend through agentic workflows. After creating a blueprint of a system, its AI agents generate production-grade code, automated tests, and deployment pipelines, automating tasks that traditionally consume thousands of developer hours.

Perhaps the most innovative claim is the platform's ability to facilitate “continuous regeneration.” Once a system is modernized or built on the platform, AI/works™ is designed to automatically regenerate affected components as business requirements, security threats, or regulations evolve. This approach aims to create systems that “stop aging,” moving away from the cycle of manual patching and large-scale rebuilds toward a model of perpetual evolution. If successful, this could dramatically reduce the total cost of ownership for enterprise software and prevent the accumulation of future technical debt.

Redefining Development in the Agentic Age

The rise of agentic platforms like AI/works™ is poised to reshape the role of the enterprise developer. By automating the arduous tasks of code translation, documentation, testing, and deployment, the platform allows engineers to shift their focus from mundane maintenance to higher-level strategic work. This includes complex problem-solving, system architecture, and innovating new business capabilities.

The goal is not to replace human developers but to augment them, creating a symbiotic relationship where AI handles the repetitive, labor-intensive tasks, and humans provide critical oversight, creativity, and strategic direction. This shift could lead to increased job satisfaction and empower development teams to become true engines of innovation rather than maintenance crews for aging technology.

Navigating a Crowded Field

Thoughtworks is not alone in the burgeoning agentic engineering space. Tech giants like Microsoft and Google, along with a host of specialized startups, are all vying to define the future of AI-assisted development. However, many emerging tools focus primarily on accelerating new code generation in clean, “greenfield” environments.

AI/works™ seeks to differentiate itself by tackling the entire software lifecycle, from the messy reality of legacy renewal to the creation of new platforms. This holistic approach has earned early recognition from industry observers.

"AI/works™ stands out because it addresses the entire lifecycle, from understanding and renewing legacy systems to building what comes next," noted R "Ray" Wang, CEO at Constellation Research. "This sets a new bar for the category."

To ensure broad enterprise adoption, the platform is built to integrate with leading cloud and data ecosystems, including AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, Databricks, and Snowflake. This interoperability is crucial for organizations operating in complex, hybrid-cloud environments. AI/works™ is currently being offered through a co-innovation program with early clients, with plans for broader availability to follow through Q1 launch activities.