10 AI Predictions For 2026

1. Anthropic will go public. OpenAI will not.
2. Details of SSI’s research and technology will leak to the public. The big labs will make meaningful adjustments to their research roadmaps as a result.
3. China’s domestic AI chip sector will make significant strides, planting the seeds for the eventual decline of Nvidia’s global dominance.
4. Discourse about AGI and superintelligence will become less fashionable and less common.
5. A mundane and esoteric accounting concept — depreciation schedules — will become critically important, especially as debt plays a growing role in the AI infrastructure buildout.
6. Many more AI companies will begin building custom chips.
7. Sam Altman will step aside as CEO of OpenAI.
8. AI will be one of the central issues in the 2026 U.S. midterm elections. The politics will get complex, especially when it comes to AI-driven job loss.
9. One of the large global pharma companies will acquire one of the leading protein AI startups.
10. Brain-computer interfaces will transition from a fringe frontier field to a mainstream technology and startup category. Neuralink’s position as the clear category leader will become shakier.