2026 AI Predictions
Here are my 5 predictions for AI in 2026
1. Anthropic is the biggest winner in AI
While AI researchers and pundits debate who is ahead on the Arena Elo or Stanford HELM leader boards, Claude will not so quietly eat the model deployment war at the application layer.
With this being the year of the Agent, I predict that enterprises that are generally risk-averse will be shopping for the safest models, not the shiniest models, to deploy AI within their organizations. Leaders want fewer surprises, fewer legal headaches, and fewer random hallucinations showing up in customer emails.
Anthropic’s whole vibe from day 1 has been safety first, and they have been building AI for business use cases. This year, that will shine through, and they will extend their lead in model deployment across businesses.
If you are a small business owner exploring different vendors for AI agents this year, don’t just go for the trendy tool. Pick the ones that let you control the output, have verifiable audit trails, and reduce risk. If your AI touches customers, money, medical info, legal stuff, or anything sensitive, treat safety like a feature you pay for, not a nice-to-have.
2. “Digital Employees” becomes a buzzword
In an interview released earlier this month, McKinsey’s managing partner Bob Sternfels said the company now has 60,000 employees and 20,000 of those are AI Agents. Look for this to be a trend this year as more companies push forward to adopt agentic AI to gain an edge for growth or appease their board.
This will be the year Agents go mainstream, but companies won’t just be looking for bots that automate one task; they will be looking for Agentic systems that can collaborate with humans to complete work.
I predict we will see more and more startups like Viven AI building digital doubles—AI Agents with the tribal knowledge of their human counterparts to execute work and preserve institutional knowledge.
While this change will start at the enterprise level, we will also see small business owners for the first time adopt agents in the form of customer support agents or personal assistants that can read and send emails, book and prepare you for calls, and handle other admin tasks that would have needed a human hire in the past.
3. Customer support agents become the #1 AI use case for small businesses
Voice AI has been rapidly improving over the past few years, and this is the year customer support agents will have their moment in the spotlight, similar to what has been happening with coding agents over the past two years.
These agents will handle more than FAQs. They’ll do order status, intake, basic troubleshooting, and appointment changes, and they’ll learn from prior conversations and handle complex support scenarios on the fly. In many cases, it will become completely indistinguishable whether you are talking to a human or an AI agent.
This will become the #1 AI use case for small businesses that historically have been limited in their support capability for customers.
4. The creator economy gets a second wind buoyed by agentic tools
When you hear about the creator economy these days, the first thing that comes to mind is probably teenagers doing the latest dance challenge on TikTok. That’s not what I mean. In 2026, AI tools will make it so normal business owners and independent creators will ship content and small digital products without hiring a full team.
The gap between ideation and creation will disappear, and more content and personalized digital products will be created than at any time in the history of mankind.
5. The AI Job apocalypse doesn’t happen
I expect more job cuts to be announced by the hyperscalers and other large enterprises this year. Many jobs are going to get squeezed out, and companies will continue to hire slowly.
On the other side, businesses that deploy Agents will also see higher growth forecasts. More growth will require humans who can collaborate symbiotically with AI Agents to support that growth. So, though there will be some major cuts, I also anticipate companies will hire more in some roles to support their growth. This will net out some of the losses and create more balance in the job market this year than many anticipate.