10 executives shared their AI predictions for 2026

John Stecher oversees various parts of Blackstone's technology and investment business. He shared three major AI predictions for the new year with Business Insider.

His first is that the adoption of AI in enterprises will “accelerate.” He believes that large companies are slower to adopt AI than small and medium-sized companies. In 2026, there will be a “deepening adoption” of AI tools to improve productivity in large enterprises.

“We believe this will improve productivity across the broader workforce,” Stescher said. “It’s an uptick from where we are today.”

Stecher's second prediction focuses on data. He said data quality and keeping it clean will increasingly become a priority, and he expects companies to invest more in this area.

His third prediction is that there will be an increased focus on cybersecurity as identity-based attacks become increasingly difficult to identify and intellectual property becomes more difficult to protect.

Cisco executive Aruna Ravichandran predicted that 2026 will bring “connected intelligence” to the workplace. She describes this as people, data and digital workers working together.

“In this new era, collaboration is frictionless, with digital workers anticipating needs, coordinating tasks in the background, and solving problems before they surface,” Ravichandran said.

Gai Diedrich, Cisco's global innovation officer, told Business Insider that he expects to see more conversations about the AI-driven economy and human-machine interaction in 2026. He said there would be more focus on combining technical expertise with “uniquely human skills.”

“This shift will rebalance priorities and focus on building cognitive muscle through classic humanities skills such as ethical judgment, cultural intelligence, and critical thinking,” Diedrich said.

One of the key trends EY Global Chief Innovation Officer Joe Depa sees in 2026 is a shift towards more AI agents and robots being supervised by humans. He said humans set the vision and AI agents and robots carry out the execution.

“Every time you bring in a new agent or a new robot comes in, you have to adjust the agents, train them, audit them, retire them,” Depa said. “And that's an area where I think new skills will be developed.”

Depa added that adaptability will become the new job security in 2026.

“Work will continue to change extremely rapidly,” Depa said, adding, “The ability to adapt and change will be the most important factor.”

Tim Armstrong, CEO of Flowcode and former CEO of AOL, shared some AI-related predictions with Business Insider. Among them is that even though the return on investment improves, advertising prices “rise vertically” and become “exponentially” more expensive.

He added that just as AI has evolved search engines into “answer engines,” advertising needs to evolve as well.

What about the AI ​​companies themselves? There will be winners and losers.

“One big AI company is going to disappear,” said the dot-com bubble veteran.

Another company would then pick up some of that overinvestment and profits.

“The roller coaster is going up now, but it will eventually come down and turn into an exciting ride where everything ends well,” he said. “But please fasten your seatbelts.”

IBM's Joanne Wright said she expects companies to shift their focus from AI hype to measuring AI's return on investment.

“It may sound easy, but it requires constant focus across the business,” Wright said.

The executive said AI success requires strong leadership and employees who are encouraged and equipped to rethink how they work with AI.

“Top-down sponsorship and bottom-up empowerment are absolutely essential,” Wright said.

Billionaire Mark Cuban predicted that in 2026, videos will be longer and include several options for character continuity. He also said he expects to see more IPs being siled to protect them from training.

That intellectual property “will be auctioned off to the underlying model that will pay the highest amount,” Cuban said.

By the end of 2026, the billionaire predicts, “at least one fundamental model” will issue a warning that: In the short term, they may face funding shortages.

Snowflake CEO Sridhar Ramaswamy told Business Insider that agentic AI (AI that operates autonomously) will become even more advanced in 2026.

He said users will be able to access more information from AI “without the need for complex dashboards.” He said the tool currently takes natural language questions and translates them into SQL queries and dashboards. He expects the process to become more seamless next year.

Ramaswamy said this might look like a model that not only shows that revenue is down 3%, but also includes information about the customers and regions where revenue appears to be decreasing.

Ramaswamy also expects automation of standard enterprise workflows to increase in the coming year. This means that routine tasks such as bill payments and legal reviews will become increasingly automated.

The CEO of home services marketplace Thumbtack told Business Insider that AI “will lead the explosion of new tools and services for small businesses in 2026.”

He said the average small business remains surprisingly underused with software because the tools that exist are typically built for large enterprises, are poorly suited, and overly complex.

“AI will enable a new wave of tools customized to the needs of small and medium-sized businesses,” Zappacosta said.

Oliver Jenkin, President of Visa Group, releases predictions for 2026 Please note that we have outlined some expectations in the payments space. His first suggestion is that proxy payments will become mainstream and consumers will increasingly rely on AI to make purchasing decisions.

“In 2026, AI-supported shopping will be very much a reality for all of us, and agent-powered commerce will naturally follow,” Jenkin wrote in a note. “Imagine opening the ChatGPT app.[自分で購入]A new button appears. ”

Jenkin also predicted a “significant increase in sophistication and volume” of AI-powered identity attacks.

“I'm excited about AI, but bad guys have access to the same technology,” Jenkin told Business Insider.