The Year Ahead: Our 2026 Outlook
2025 was a year defined by rapid innovation and a shifting geopolitical landscape.
Artificial intelligence advanced at breakneck speed, reshaping industries, economies, and even the foundations of society. The race toward harnessing artificial intelligence has become one of the defining competitions of our era.
Geopolitical dynamics evolved rapidly, underscoring the need for critical capabilities and infrastructure. While defense hard power remains essential, it also became clear that technological innovation and commercial influence are now central to global leadership.
There is a convergence of multiple fundamental disruptions happening simultaneously. From the urgent need to transform our energy generation, distribution, and storage and breakthroughs in gene editing that are reshaping healthcare, to the commercialization of quantum computing, which promises to revolutionize problem-solving and security. This new era represents a set of significant challenges for society, but also transformative opportunities.
Hear from our team about the themes, dynamics, and opportunities we see as we look to the year ahead and beyond.
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
“The rise of domain-specific AI will scale substantially faster than many expect. We have already seen what platforms like Harvey have achieved in the legal domain, with many more domain-specific AI experiences emerging quickly. At the same time, physical AI is beginning to take off, as autonomous systems and robotics move into more human environments, including hospitals, offices, and the home. Edge AI is also becoming the default experience, as PCs, phones, and tablets gain the capabilities needed to support more untethered AI use.
As the stakes around digital trust rise, enterprises are demanding verified data and content, while governments push toward greater regulation, sovereign and allied clouds, and data geopatriation. And even as enterprises search for ROI, they continue to go all in, recognizing that AI is no longer a choice, but a requirement.”
– Michael Rolnick
"As we head into 2026, a continued trend will be the embodiment of foundation models, from generative AI that lives on screens to models that can operate in and make sense of the physical world. Advances in multimodal data collection, real-time processing, and edge native inference will accelerate this shift, ushering in a new era of physical intelligence."
– Josh Heatley
“In 2026, broad AI innovation will continue at a blistering pace, keeping the technology far from the maturity plateau of the standard S-curve. In this stage, development speed still trumps efficiency. However, specific applications are beginning to diverge. Much like the evolution of computer vision, verticals such as AI coding are entering a phase where quality is largely established, making operational efficiency just as critical as performance improvements. This transition creates a 1000x potential opportunity for improvement across the computing stack, necessitating everything from better silicon to smaller, domain-specific models. It is this drive for efficiency that will lower barriers to entry, powering a new generation of startups to democratize access to advanced AI.”
– Amir Salek
BIOTECH
“It is an exciting time with AI and synthetic biology coming of age. For years, we could design chemicals and novel medicines but lacked the ability to manufacture them at scale – now that gap is closing. I’m also energized by the shift from reactive sick-care to proactive health-care, driven by ubiquitous access to AI, sensors, and health data. One day, health will be defined not by the absence of sickness but by the presence of vitality.”
– Chenny Zhang
GEOPOLITICS & DEFENSE
"2026 can be a catalytic year for starting and scaling companies in Europe. A silver lining to the very dark cloud of the war in Ukraine has been increased urgency to nurture innovation ecosystems across the continent, and to build businesses that matter to national security and economic prosperity. Making good on this moment will strengthen not only Europe, but also the United States and societies around the world."
– Nate Fick
“2026 will be a defining year for dual-use defense technologies. Technologies that enable energy security, underpin compute infrastructure, and secure undersea domains, alongside biotechnology advancements in medicine, agriculture, and manufacturing, are becoming even more critical to both national security and commercial competitiveness.”
– Sarah Istel
QUANTUM
“Quantum continues to emerge as a critical category. In 2026, more talent will pour into the space and we predict that scalable quantum computing will be a core focus for emerging startups and builders. Companies are working to simplify quantum systems, reduce their power consumption, and minimize readout demands to support scalability. It is innovations in cryogenics, multiplexed wiring solutions, and advanced materials that will be fundamental in enabling a quantum future.”
– Morgan Mahlock
INFRASTRUCTURE
“As AI adoption accelerates into 2026, the era of brute-force scaling will increasingly give way to hard physical limits. While capital remains disproportionately concentrated at the software and model layers, the true constraints on deployment are emerging lower in the stack, such as power density, heat dissipation, and data movement. The most durable opportunities lie in technologies that structurally redesign these systems, enabling materially more work per watt, per rack, and per dollar, rather than relying on incremental scaling alone.”
– Shayan Ilbagian
“Sensor innovation is entering a defining phase. As AI-enabled systems increasingly rely on real-world data to learn, reason, and operate, sensors have become critical infrastructure. Building on 2025's surge in efforts to develop comprehensive world models, innovators are accelerating the creation of new hardware for capturing richer, more precise data. These advances are improving existing measurement capabilities and unlocking new metrics entirely, encompassing everything from our environment to human biology."
– Aidan Bruno
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