10 executives shared their 2026 AI predictions with us

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

His first is that there will be an "acceleration" of enterprise AI adoption. He said larger companies have been slower to adopt AI than small and medium-sized businesses, and 2026 will bring a "deepening adoption" of AI tools that enhance productivity at larger companies.

"I see it driving productivity across the broader workforce," Stecher said. "Up from where it's at today."

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

His third prediction is an increased focus on cybersecurity, as identity-based attacks grow harder to identify and intellectual property becomes more difficult to protect.

Cisco executive Aruna Ravichandran predicted that 2026 will bring "connected intelligence" in the workplace, which she describes as people, data, and digital workers working together.

"In this new era, collaboration happens without friction. Digital workers anticipate needs, coordinate tasks in the background, and resolve issues before they surface," Ravichandran said.

Cisco's global innovation officer, Guy Diedrich, told Business Insider that in 2026, he expects more discussion around the AI-driven economy and the interactions between humans and machines. He said there will be more attention to combining technical expertise with "uniquely human skills."

"This shift will rebalance priorities, placing greater emphasis on building cognitive muscle through ethical judgment, cultural intelligence, and critical thinking — all classic humanities skills," Diedrich said.

One of the key trends EY global chief innovation officer Joe Depa expects to see in 2026, is a shift toward humans overseeing more AI agents and robots. He said people will set the vision, while AI agents and robots carry out the execution.

"You're going to have to orchestrate the agents, train them, audit them, retire them as new agents come in as new robots come in," Depa said. "And so that's an area that I think new skills are going to be developed."

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

"Jobs are going to continue to change super fast," Depa said, adding that the "ability to adapt and change is going to be the most important component."

Tim Armstrong, CEO of Flowcode and former CEO of AOL, shared several AI-related predictions with Business Insider. Among them: Ad prices will "go vertical" and become "exponentially" more expensive, even as returns on investment improve.

He added that ads will need to evolve — mirroring the way AI has driven the search engine to evolve into an "answer engine."

As for the AI companies themselves? There will be winners and losers.

"There will be one giant AI company wipe out," the veteran of the dot-com bubble said.

In turn, another company will pick up on some of that over-investment and benefit.

"The rollercoaster is going up right now and it will eventually come down and turn into an exciting ride that all ends well," he said. "But make sure your seatbelt is on — tightly."

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

"That may sound simple, but it demands relentless focus across the business," Wright said.

The executive said that AI success requires strong leadership and a workforce 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 become longer, with some options for character continuity. He also said he expects to see more IP siloed to protect it from being trained on.

That IP "will be auctioned off to the foundational models that will pay the most," Cuban said.

By the end of 2026, the billionaire also predicts that "at least one of the foundational models" will warn that it could face near-term cash shortfalls.

Snowflake CEO Sridhar Ramaswamy told Business Insider that 2026 will bring more advancements to agentic AI, or AI that operates autonomously.

He said users will get to a point where they can access more information from AI "without needing complicated dashboarding." Currently, he said, tools take natural language questions and translate them into SQL queries or dashboards. Next year, he expects that process to become more seamless.

That may look like a model telling you that not only is revenue down by 3%, but also including information about the customers and regions where it appears to have decreased, Ramaswamy said.

Ramaswamy also expects an increase in automation of standard enterprise workflows next year. That means routine tasks, like paying invoices or legal reviews, will become increasingly automated.

The CEO of Thumbtack, a marketplace for home services, told Business Insider that AI will "lead an explosion of new tools and offerings for small businesses in 2026."

He said the average small business still uses surprisingly little software because the tools that exist are typically built for larger businesses, making them a poor fit and overly complicated.

"AI will enable a new wave of tools tailor-made for the needs of SMBs," Zappacosta said.

Visa's group president, Oliver Jenkyn, published a 2026 prediction note that outlined several expectations in the payments space. His first: Agentic payments will become mainstream, with consumers increasingly relying on AI to make purchasing decisions for them.

"In 2026, AI-supported shopping will become very real for all of us, and agentic commerce will naturally follow," Jenkyn wrote in the note. "Imagine opening your ChatGPT app, but now there is a new button: 'Buy for Me.'"

Jenkyn also predicted a "material increase in the sophistication and volume" of AI-powered identity attacks.

"As much as I'm excited about AI, the bad guys have access to the same tech," Jenkyn told Business Insider.