33 predictions for 2026 in AI: consumer, enterprise, AI capex, and more
Thoughts on what's the bankable trends are in AI
In this post, I’ve put together my 33 predictions and hot takes for AI, which will guide all my key investing, career, and technical decisions in 2026.
The main topics are:
broad / macro / AI capex views
consumer AI,
enterprise AI,
technical predictions,
promising AI startups / miscellaneous private market themes
I write this mainly to think clearly about what’s worth watching. And what’s coming is rapid change. 2026 will see more - not less - change happening. Fast change could be good for you, or be extremely bad, if you are on the wrong side of change. That’s why you need to keep an open mind. Plus, not all progress in AI will lead to good.
To convince yourself that rapid change is coming, consider how the AI agent space evolved this year. Let’s retrace some recent history through my blog posts.
Around January 2025, practically no one was seriously interested in AI agents, and most people thought it was a scam (many still do, but they are in denial).
Around February 2025, Deep Research came out, which convinced many smart people about AI agents’ utility. DeepSeek had no agentic capabilities then, but it freaked people out.
Around April 2025, the vast majority of tech workers still couldn’t define what an AI agent was, but many were eager to learn, which led to me running workshops.
Around May-June 2025, coding AI agent adoption “crossed the chasm”, and vibe coding startup investments piled on. Many still criticized Cursor for having low gross margins. Enterprises started to feel intense FOMO over AI agents.
By late September 2025, even consumer chatbots are all agentic. OpenAI got more serious about enterprise, and cost optimization (through routing). OpenAI suddenly got serious competition from Google and Anthropic on all fronts.
As of December 2025, coding AI agents can autonomously complete tasks that take humans 2-4 hours. Open Source Chinese models catches up to Sonnet 4 level.
With that said, let’s get into the predictions.
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