Tech leaders predict 2026, part 1: AI, innovation, and economic outlook

If 2024 was the year AI entered the mainstream, and 2025 was the year companies scrambled to turn experimentation into strategy, then 2026 is shaping up to be the moment tech leaders stop asking whether AI will transform the way we work, and instead start measuring how deeply it already has.

From the accelerating shift toward agentic AI systems to a labour market recalibrating around adaptability, intuition, and original data, the coming year will test how prepared organisations truly are.

We asked tech experts across industries for their opinions, hot takes, and predictions for the year to come. Here is who participated:

• Lele Cao, Sr Principal AI/ML Researcher at King (Microsoft Gaming)
• Kirill Groshkov, CTO at Natural Cycles
• Ludvig Strand, Emerging Tech & AI Future Analyst at Axel Johnson
• Cecilia Borg, interim CTO/VP Eng at Be Afraid and Do IT Anyway
• Yogesh Malik, Way2Direct / New Tech Investor / Global CTIO / CTO & CIO of the Year 2017 / Customer / Data Flows
• Jaco Bosman, Head of Technology & AI at Impala Studios
• Carrie Carrasco, Director OpenShift Platform at Red Hat
• Goran Cvetanovski, CEO at Hyperight
• Lobo Olsson, Director of Engineering at HelloFresh

Read part two of this article here.

Technology, AI & innovation

By 2026, how do you see the relationship between humans and AI evolving — will we see more collaboration or replacement?

My current view on AI development is most closely aligned with that of Andrej Karpathy. I expect AGI to come not sooner than in 10 years from now, and without AGI, it's too early to talk about replacement. Collaboration it is.

Kirill Groshkov

Ludvig Strand:

For sure, more collaboration. I think it's always down to timing. We will definitely see replacements, but I think during 2026, it will be more about augmentation still. And I think we will reach a higher level of sophistication next year, going from using AI to solve simple tasks in our workflows, like answering a quick question, to becoming increasingly sophisticated in our AI use. Like, actually using AI to do some research for us in the process and to tackle some more advanced or complex questions.

Of course, I'm speaking about the general public, because I believe they're further behind than the early adopters on this.

Lele Cao:

By 2026, the real story will be augmentation, not replacement: AI will quietly sit inside tools, workflows, and games, amplifying human judgment rather than removing humans from the loop. The most competitive organizations will be those that design processes that enable humans and AI to co-learn at scale.

Yogesh Malik:

In 2026, we’ll see both replacement and collaboration. AI will take over repetitive and entry-level tasks, but higher-value work will shift toward a deeper human/AI partnership. Humans will guide, validate, and add context, while AI handles scale and speed. The future isn’t one or the other; it’s smarter automation plus stronger collaboration.

Jaco Bosman:

I think we'll see a clear swing toward collaboration over replacement. Most knowledge roles will use copilots for research, drafting, analysis, coding, and decision support. Fully replacing humans remains rare outside narrow, rules-based processes. I do expect to see output per person to rise, and average team size per scope not increase.

Which emerging technologies (AI agents, edge computing, quantum, AR/VR) will make the biggest real-world impact by 2026?

I think it will be voice-first interaction powered by large language models. We’re moving from “chat with AI” to talk with AI that actually understands context, emotion, and intent. I think every app will eventually gain a natural-language interface, enabling it to speak, listen, reason, and act in real time.

Jaco Bosman

Kirill Groshkov:

I don't expect technological revolutions to happen in a timeframe as short as one year. So, I expect evolution instead. 2026 will be like 2025, but AI answers will be 10% better, 5% more expensive, and agents will be very slightly more autonomous. I expect a feeling, compared with going from ChatGPT 4 to ChatGPT 5, to be very subtle and incremental.

Yogesh Malik:

By 2026, AI agents and AR/VR will drive the biggest real-world impact. AI agents will automate daily tasks and decisions, while AR/VR finally goes mainstream–letting people personalize their digital spaces.

Lele Cao:

AI agents running close to the data (on-device or at the edge) will have the most tangible impact, because they shrink the gap between perception, decision, and action. Quantum will still be mostly strategic and experimental by 2026.

Ludvig Strand:

For sure, it's AI. Any other technology could, of course, make a move, but not on the scale of AI. I really believe we're seeing strong signals that AI is actually starting to handle real workflows in the workplace. So one thing is individuals using AI, and what place AI takes there. But when it comes to organizations using AI to integrate this technology into processes, we see really interesting signals: you can automate quite a lot of processes and do things you just couldn't do with a human organization.

Lobo Olsson:

AI Agents, for sure. I don't think AR/VR will be that impactful outside specific fields, and quantum computing is still far off, in my opinion.

What do you think will be the next big wave after generative AI?

I believe it will be quantum computing.

Carrie Carrasco

Jaco Bosman:

Autonomous workflows that chain models, tools, and data with verifiable logs.

Lobo Olsson:

I think local AI. People will probably start seeing the costs of running large models externally, so I think having local models running on your machines that just run things in the background will be the next step.

Yogesh Malik:

The next big wave after generative AI will be “presence”. Today, humans connect through devices such as phones, computers, and headsets. The next era moves toward device-independent connection, where digital presence becomes seamless: immersive worlds without hardware barriers, brain-interface access, and computing that feels natural and intuitive. After GenAI’s intelligence leap, the next wave is tech presence in the digital human world.

Goran Cvetanovski:

We are not moving beyond generative AI; we are moving through it. Foundation models have hit a plateau in terms of raw capability, but their real potential now comes from convergence. The next wave is the shift from standalone GenAI tools to integrated, multi-modal, agentic systems where GenAI becomes one component in a broader automation stack. The real innovation will come from how GenAI is combined with real-time data, enterprise systems, and domain-specific intelligence.

Lele Cao:

For this question, I tend to agree with Feifei Li about spatial intelligence, and it also overlaps significantly with research on the so-called World Model.

How will “AI copilots” or autonomous agents redefine productivity and creativity by 2026?

Probably, the biggest leap in creativity will come from lowering the experimentation cost: you’ll try 10x more ideas because the agent handles the glue work in between. Productivity also comes from "knowing" the relevant (to the task) part of the history and context.

Lele Cao

Carrie Carasco:

I believe productivity will increase at individual levels.

Jaco Bosman:

You already see that Copilots and agents are handling the heavy lifting, and this will continue. Code refactors, SDK upgrades, CI/CD fixes, testing, and documentation will be handled by agents. At the same time, non-developers will become better at coding without realizing it. Natural language prompts will generate production-ready scripts, workflows, and integrations. Every marketer, analyst, or designer will take on the role of a developer. Code creation will shift from a craft limited to engineers to a skill amplified by AI.

Lobo Olsson:

I don't think it will redefine it per se. But I think it will remove or change a lot of manual work, such as copy-pasting between systems or reformatting for different use cases. It will be easier to manage content, images, and related assets. But I do think teams will need to redefine how they work to fully benefit from these tools. Most won't do it, just like most teams are not working with TDD, XP, and similar, which have proven benefits. But those who can will be very impactful.

Yogesh Malik:

By 2026, AI copilots and agents will boost productivity, but not transform it overnight. They’re still not personalized enough to deeply understand individual workflows. The real shift will be gradual: agents handling more routine tasks while humans focus on creative, higher-value work. Full autonomy will take longer.

Cecilia Borg:

We will need to adapt all creative processes into quick iterations aided by GenAI.

Goran Cvetanovski:

By 2026, we will see meaningful progress, but not at the scale many expect. Agentic AI will remain in controlled pilots because most enterprises are still architecturally and culturally unprepared. We underestimate the operational, governance, and integration complexity. The real productivity gains will emerge once organizations redesign workflows and not simply add a copilot on top of old processes. That maturity shift will take more than twelve months.

Do you expect a backlash or regulation wave against AI systems by 2026, or will adoption accelerate?

No. It rather seems like the pushback against AI systems is slowing down. I do, however, expect the costs of AI systems to rise, and although adoption will continue, I expect business leaders to be more careful about return on investment.

Lobo Olsson

Yogesh Malik:

By 2026, we’ll see both adoption and backlash, especially in Europe. AI use will accelerate, but concerns around data residency, sovereignty, and transparency will trigger tighter regulations. Expect stronger guardrails, more scrutiny on how data is stored and used, and a push for “trust-first” AI.

Lele Cao:

My current take is a compound: the EU tries to excel quickly in foundational and application AI, hence regulation will be discussed for sure, but I can hardly see an aggressive move; that said, I believe the EU will move faster. At the same time, many main players probably need to treat regulation as part of their design constraints, not as an afterthought.

Jaco Bosman:

I think both. More and sharper regulation on copyright, misinformation, safety, data residency, and model provenance. Adoption will accelerate due to ROI, hype, and productivity gains.

Ludvig Strand:

I think adoption will accelerate next year. We see higher adoption on the private, consumer, and organizational work-based sides as well. And that will continue in terms of regulation. We're seeing the EU start to roll back some regulations because of all the scrutiny around them. So, I don't see any increase in regulation next year. It could be the opposite, that we actually see some rollbacks.

Cecilia Borg:

Adoption will accelerate for sure.

Goran Cvetanovski:

Both forces will coexist. Regulation will tighten, but it will not be allowed to suffocate innovation. When commercial competitiveness is at stake, political systems adapt. If regulatory friction slows progress too much, both the EU and the US will recalibrate. Neither can afford to fall behind regions that take a more aggressive innovation stance.

Which industries are most at risk of disruption by AI in the next 18 months?

The media, gaming, and service sectors are already experiencing accelerated disruption. Functions that combine high-volume content creation or repetitive decision-making like marketing, sales, customer service, basic admin will continue to be reshaped first. These areas have low barriers to adoption and immediate ROI.

Goran Cvetanovski

Lele Cao:

I would say many at different levels. Content-heavy jobs, marketing, customer support, software engineering, design, photography, consulting, and accounting are under immediate impact because AI can automate the "mid-senior" analysis layer. Education and HR are also at an inflection point, moving from static processes to adaptive, AI-driven experiences.

Jaco Bosman:

I think we will see disruption in education and corporate training content.

Yogesh Malik:

In the next 18 months, the biggest AI disruption risks will hit entertainment, connectivity, advertising, specialized education, and legal services. These industries rely heavily on knowledge work, content production, and pattern-based tasks, all prime for fast AI automation and reinvention.

Carrie Carrasco:

Banking, retail, utilities, and transport.

Ludvig Strand:

We are already starting to see the impact on marketing. Then, of course, consultancy is one industry that is in the risk zone. Eventually, retail is also a bit in the risk zone because we are just intermediaries. AI could start going around with the intermediaries and going with the suppliers.

Next year, perhaps we'll start to see changes in consultancy. In this world of AI, the really big differentiator now is data. If you have if you have a lot of original content data, there's a huge advantage. And of course, if you flip that around, there are some consultancy firms with a lot of data when it comes to strategy and what works and what doesn't. Much could perhaps be replicated by AI, but having access to the original data is really a key differentiator going forward.

Market & economic outlook

What are your predictions for the global economy in 2026: growth, stagnation, or volatility?

2026 will be defined by volatility, not steady growth. Fragility will come from three pressures: rising overregulation, a potential AI investment bubble and organizations struggling to turn technology into real productivity gains on the P&L. These forces will create an uneven, unpredictable global economy.

Yogesh Malik

Lobo Olsson:

Growth generally. I think the markets have calmed down after the chaos with the US and Ukraine, and some of the AI hype has died down as well. This means the markets can focus on more sustained growth and the realization of actual value creation. There is still a risk of an AI bubble, and I don't think we are going into a sustained long-term growth, but I think 2026 is positive.

Lele Cao:

Modest global growth on average, strong sector divergence (AI-accelerated vs. laggard industries), and persistent volatility. Productivity gains from AI will still be unevenly distributed, with organizational capability being a bigger differentiator than access to models.

Which macro factors (interest rates, geopolitical risks, green transitions, digital regulation) will have the biggest impact on business strategies?

Lele Cao:

Geopolitical fragmentation and digital regulation will shape where data lives and where AI can be deployed in what sector. For tech-heavy businesses, the regulation + energy + talent triangle will matter a lot.

Jaco Bosman:

Geopolitical fragmentation that pressures vendor choice and data locality.

Yogesh Malik:

The biggest macro forces shaping 2026 strategies will be geopolitical risk, rising regulation and persistent inflation. These pressures will drive tighter planning cycles, more resilience-focused investments and a shift toward operational efficiency over growth or expansion.

What trends do you expect to dominate tech investment and funding by 2026?

AI adoption will be the life or death choice for companies.

Cecilia Borg

Jaco Bosman:

Not sure about dominate, but i believe a huge increase in companies that focus on Generative Engine Optimization.

Ludvig Strand:

I think we'll see a lot more investment in agentic AI. We know the extent of what we've had with Gen AI, but there will be more investment around AI systems doing real work that is comparable to humans. We see that it's working quite well for specific processes and types of tasks.

We might see some backlash or overestimate what the technology can do, because it can do quite a lot, but many people believe it will be able to do a lot more in replacing humans at work. Jeffrey Hinton said in 2015 that, because AI can do radiology quite well, it doesn’t mean it will automate or make the job redundant. But of course we knew that radiologists' work consists of about 20 to 30 different tests and and scanning these images is just one of them, so I think the same thing that we've seen with autonomous vehicles, where it took perhaps a decade to really feel its potential, we'll see with agents as well. So again, a lot of investments will go there. Many cases can be solved. Uh, but for the more general parts where we believe that AI agents will actually run businesses or run roles instead of people, it will take just a lot more time.

Lele Cao:

Capital will concentrate on AI-native infrastructure (agents, orchestration, eval/safety) and domain-specific AI for verticals such as publishing, healthcare, and industrial systems. Investors will ask much harder questions than before.

Carrie Carrasco:

AI agents and scaling AI in a safe manner.

Yogesh Malik:

By 2026, tech investment will be dominated by AI, especially agents, automation, and infrastructure that reduces cost and boosts speed. Funding will flow to practical, ROI-driven AI rather than hype, with a strong focus on data platforms and security.

Lobo Olsson:

Still AI tooling for sure, but distributed into more specialized tools rather than the general LLM tools that have dominated the last 2 years.

Wildcards & future vision

What’s one 2026 prediction you think most people are underestimating right now?

Lele Cao:

My guess: how quickly AI will reshape leisure (games, UGC, and social spaces) domain turning individual users into co-creators with AI by default. The biggest shift may show up in how we play and learn, not just how we work.

Goran Cvetanovski:

The biggest competitive advantage will not be model performance. It will be workforce performance. Companies with AI-literate teams who understand how to integrate, govern, and operationalize AI will outperform those betting solely on technology. Talent maturity will separate leaders from laggards. Yogesh Malik:

Despite global shifts, the U.S. is poised to lead in AI, capital, innovation, and market influence shaping the world far more than many expect.

Jaco Bosman:

On-device AI will matter more than people expect. Phones and laptops will run strong local models that cut cloud bills and unlock private workflows.

Cecilia Borg:

SaaS companies need to watch out, as everyone can vibe code a Slack client or Trello instance to their needs and not pay the huge bills of today.

What “unthinkable today” innovation or shift might be normal by 2026?

Cecilia Borg:

Code and recode - We'll encapsulate code and not maintain it, rather regenerate the same functionality.

Yogesh Malik:

By 2026, an “unthinkable today” shift that may feel normal is technology adapting to humans rather than the other way around. Systems will sense our surroundings, preferences and state of mind, and adjust in real time. Environments, tools and experiences will feel almost instinctively responsive to the human.

Lele Cao:

It could feel normal to have a persistent personal AI that knows your history, preferences, and goals, and negotiates with other agents on your behalf. For many people, this agent will be their primary interface to the digital world, more central than any single app.

What could cause the next “AI winter” or technological reset?

Yogesh Malik:

The next AI winter could be triggered by energy stress or AI’s massive power hunger colliding with grid instability or major outages. If systems go dark, our growing dependence on AI could expose how unprepared humans and organizations are to operate without it, forcing a painful technological reset.

Lele Cao:

An AI winter could come from a combination of a visible capability plateau, disappointing real-world productivity gains, and one or two high-profile safety or misuse crises that trigger a political brake. If organizations can’t turn current excitement into trustworthy, measurable value, both capital and public patience will cool.

Carrie Carrasco:

When quantum computing becomes consumable by "normal" people.

Goran Cvetanovski:

A geopolitical shock. AI itself will not slow. Its trajectory is irreversible. But external crises such as war could force resource reprioritization, disrupt supply chains, and catalyze new regulatory barriers. Short of that, AI will continue to accelerate.

Jaco Bosman:

I think a major safety incident combined with legal clampdowns.

How might the balance of global tech leadership (US, EU, Asia) look different in 2026?

“You see a lot of activity in China, and it's just continuing at a very rapid pace. I definitely see China becoming an even stronger player in the ecosystem. And what's interesting with that is that the open source nature of their models that are performing par or at least close to the leading frontier models makes it quite interesting because the rest of the world might adopt it at another pace."

Ludvig Strand

I think the European ecosystem is quite interesting as well. When it comes to certain categories, we have the leading AI application companies, not only from Sweden, but of course, Sweden is also punching above its weight there. And we're starting to see the EU also looking at it a bit differently in terms of securing tech leadership. I believe we have the foundations, at least for AI applications. Of course, when it comes to the rest of the value chain, we have barely anything. So when it comes to data center infrastructure, chip design, chip making, we don't have anything. Only ASML is making the lithography machines.

Lele Cao:

I believe tech leadership will be clearly tri-polar: the US still leads on general-purpose foundation models, Asia dominates in hardware and consumer-scale deployment, and Europe becomes the reference model for how to industrialize AI in regulated, safety-critical, and green-conscious sectors. I expect at least one EU ecosystem (Nordics/Germany/France/UK+partners) to emerge as a genuine sovereign AI cluster: combining open models, strong research, and industrial data depth.

Goran Cvetanovski:

Same as this year. US and China leading, EU trying to catch up.

Jaco Bosman:

I think the EU will become more strict and focus on compliance and safety, which will continue to restrict innovation in the EU. Asia will probably lead in devices and robotics.

Yogesh Malik:

By 2026, Asia’s tech influence will rise sharply and if key Asian countries align, their growth could accelerate even faster. The U.S. will remain strong, but Asia’s scale, speed, and collaboration potential will shift the global tech momentum to the East.

Cecilia Borg:

Motivated individuals anywhere have all the tools.

Summary

If 2026 has a message, it’s this: the future won’t wait for anyone to catch up. AI is accelerating, talent expectations are shifting, and the companies that thrive will be those that treat adaptation as a daily habit, not a quarterly initiative.

Whether it’s agentic AI, new economic pressures, or the rise of on-device intelligence, tech leaders agree: the next year will reward organizations that stay curious, experiment boldly, and build for a world where human intuition and machine capability strengthen each other. The only certainty is change. Everything else is strategy.

Read part two of this article here.