Stack Exchange, the company behind Stack Overflow and other question-and-answer sites, says it is “embarking on a rebrand process,” as the number of posts to its site continues a dramatic decline thanks to AI-driven alternatives.

According to a quick query on the official data explorer, the sum of questions and answers posted in April 2025 was down by over 64 percent from the same month in 2024, and plunged more than 90 percent from April 2020, when traffic was near its peak.

The Stack Overflow brand is well recognized, so why a rebrand? The official post refers to how AI is “reshaping how we build, learn, and solve problems,” and it appears the company is casting about for new ways to provide value (and drive business) in this context.

Many users are not convinced that rebranding is the answer. “No DevOps, SysAdmins, C/C++/Python/Rust/Java programmers, DBAs, or other frequent Stack users are concerned about branding, the existing set of sites is just fine,” said one.

Nevertheless, community SVP Philippe Beaudette and marketing SVP Eric Martin stated that the company’s “brand identity” is causing “daily confusion, inconsistency, and inefficiency both inside and outside the business.”

Among other things, Beaudette and Martin feel that Stack Overflow, dedicated to developer Q&A, is too prominent and that “most decisions are developer-focused, often alienating the wider network.”

While there are numerous Stack Exchange sites, Stack Overflow dominates, with far more content than any of the others. Brand design director David Longworth said the “tension mentioned between Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange” is the most relevant to the rebrand plans.

CEO Prashanth Chandrasekar said the company would like to shift from having one main focus, this being Q&A, to having three, adding “community and careers pillars.”

The company has already experimented with various new services, via its Labs research department, including an AI Answer Assistant and Question Assistant, as well as a revamped jobs site in association with recruitment site Indeed, Discussions for technical debate, and extensions for GitHub Copilot, Slack, and Visual Studio Code.

Although declining traffic is a sign of Stack Overflow’s reduced significance in the developer community, the company’s business is not equally affected so far. Stack Exchange is a business owned by investment company Prosus, and the Stack Exchange products include private versions of its site (Stack Overflow for Teams) as well as advertising and recruitment. According to the Prosus financial results, in the six months ended September 2024, Stack Overflow increased its revenue and reduced its losses.

The company’s search for a new direction though confirms that the fast-disappearing developer engagement with Stack Overflow poses an existential challenge to the organization. Those who have found the site unfriendly or too ready to close carefully-worded questions as duplicate or off-topic may not be sad; but it is also true that the service has delivered high value to developers over many years. Although AI may seem to provide a better replacement, some proportion of those AI answers will be based on the human-curated information posted by the community to Stack Overflow. The decline in traffic is not good news for developers, nor for the AI which is replacing it.