The Year AI Must Deliver
The AI model maker race will continue in 2026, along with more agents and a growing pressure on companies to prove AI can pay off in the real world, experts tell Axios.
As Venky Ganesan, a partner at Menlo Ventures, puts it: “2026 is the ‘show me the money’ year for AI.”
From Hype to ROI
According to IBM’s Joanne Wright, SVP of transformation and operations, companies will shift their focus from AI hype to measuring the return on investment of AI. The days of investing in AI for its own sake are over—now it’s about demonstrable business value.
Agentic AI Matures
Semi-autonomous agents were the talk of 2025, but businesses were hesitant to hand off too much work to AI models that were still prone to making mistakes.
Key predictions for 2026:
- Beyond Q&A — “A year from now, answering questions will be the least useful thing AI can do,” according to industry experts
- Deterministic integration — Companies implementing AI will get more creative about connecting them to deterministic systems that will take the variability out of AI results
- Ambitious goals — “In 2026, the most successful companies will set goals that sound absurd without AI—and then use agent collaboration to make them routine,” says Dan Rogers, CEO of Asana
Record Funding Sets the Stage
The stakes are high. According to a Financial Times report citing PitchBook data, the largest private U.S. companies raised a record $150 billion in 2025, overshadowing the previous high of $92 billion raised in 2021.
Major funding rounds in 2025:
- OpenAI: $40 billion (largest private round in history)
- Anthropic: $13 billion
- xAI: $10 billion
- Scale AI: Acquired by Meta for ~$15 billion
$500 Billion Infrastructure Bet
To will that future into reality, Big Tech companies are projected to invest more than $500 billion in 2026 to build AI infrastructure, including networks and data centers.
The pressure is on. 2026 will determine which AI investments pay off and which become cautionary tales.