At Sentrix, we have a single clear prediction for AI in 2026: 2026 will see the beginning of AI delivering material business value.
There are a few key ways that AI will start to deliver value:
- The use of AI Coding Agents will mature as software engineers adopt new processes and tooling to build substantially more sophisticated software.
- AI will make its way into business processes. Adoption will look like BPO adoption from the early 2000s and may consolidate within existing vendors.
- AI's use in knowledge work will resemble Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO) albeit with a unique Knowledge Work Automation (KWA) flare.
We expect AI-assisted and AI-native software development to mature substantially faster than adoption with business processes and knowledge work. The main reason for this is the rapid feedback loops and digital verification that comes with software development.
Importantly, customer expectations will radically increase as AI-assisted and AI-native software development matures. As engineering and product orgs learn to deliver software that is able to deliver more value, customer expectations will increase in tandem. 2026 will be the year that CRUD applications start to look and feel "old" as ambient compute, situational UIs, agentic workflows take hold.
Overall, we expect 2026 to be an exciting and transformational year.
