AI in the year 2026: Innovation meets pragmatism

The year 2026 marks a shift in the way companies use AI. Executives want AI that delivers productivity gains, reduces costs and strengthens the resilience of supply chains. At the same time, technical maturity is increasing, such as multimodal AI, which makes new application concepts possible. In 2026, innovation meets pragmatism.

AI will become invisible
In 2026, AI will enter its industrial phase and thus become an instrumental matter of course. It will develop from an independent function into the basis of many areas of work. The most important criterion is practical support in planning, inventory optimization or predictive maintenance in areas such as manufacturing, energy or services. Increases in efficiency and effectiveness are key.

Agentic AI goes into series production
Agent-based AI makes the leap from pilot programs to series production in 2026 Autonomous agents will become the backbone of many business processes and increasingly cooperate with each other. For example, maintenance agents will communicate with planning agents and procurement agents with logistics agents. This will take operational tasks to a new level of contextualized and autonomous execution, but will also pose new challenges in terms of governance, security and interoperability.

The workforce is becoming hybrid
In 2026, the world of work will see the rise of hybrid teams in which humans and AI agents work side by side. Roles and the division of labor will change. AI will take over routine tasks, while humans will shift to higher-value activities. This could be the management of agents, their further development, ensuring ethical standards or making strategic decisions. Many work processes therefore need to be redesigned.

The pressure to be efficient is growing
The resource requirements of AI will become a critical issue in 2026. The decisive factors here will be profitability, i.e. economic efficiency, on the one hand, and sustainability, i.e. ecological responsibility, on the other. Companies will be looking for new energy-conscious models, infrastructures and architectures in order to balance performance and costs. Efficiency will therefore become the new AI benchmark.

Results become the benchmark
Platforms will increasingly integrate into networked architectures. Companies will use a new form of "best-of-breed" approach that orchestrates AI across all systems. The focus will be on the results that are de facto achieved. The focus will be on availability, efficiency and resilience, supported by architectures that are continuously evolving.

Converging technologies
Last but not least, the technology landscape will move towards convergence in 2026. Multimodal AI, agent-based systems and embodied AI will merge into unified environments. Digital intelligence will interact directly with the physical world via sensors, robots, drones and networked infrastructure. In the course of this development, companies will become self-optimizing systems that perceive, decide and act in real time.

"AI will enter a new phase in 2026: it will become an operational necessity," explains Sören Michl, Vice President AI Adoption at IFS. "AI will not replace enterprise software, but redefine it. Successful companies will not see AI as a technology project, but as an operational transformation that affects every process and every person."