The biggest tech trends to expect in 2026

The biggest tech trends to expect in 2026 Features (Image credit: Getty Images / Justin Sullivan) (Image credit: Shutterstock/Poetra.RH) (Image credit: Pixabay) (Image credit: Nvidia) (Image credit: Unsplash / Windows) (Image credit: Getty Images) (Image credit: Samsung) (Image credit: Apple) (Image credit: 1X) (Image credit: Shutterstock) Lance Ulanoff published Inescapable AI chased by a humanoid robot army, that's all There's part of me that would like nothing more than to sit here and bask in the warm glow of multiple spot-on predictions for 2025 . I saw the humanoid robot army coming, folding phones rise, more AI-ready local CPUs, more agents, smart glasses turning a big corner, and AI hardware collapsing; but gloating won't get you anywhere. It's time for me to turn my attention to the fast-approaching new year. What will 2026 bring to the technology table? I have some ideas, and I considered for a moment making this a one-word article: 'AI.' It's more nuanced than that, of course. Developments across this vast and ever-expanding field, represented by that increasingly ubiquitous initialism, will be myriad. When I consider 2026, my mind is stuffed full of possibilities and, not being an actual prophet, I have only my reasonably well-informed guesswork to go by. That's why, as I've done in previous years, I talked to my good friend and long-time industry watcher Tim Bajarin, who serves as chairman of the analyst group Creative Strategies, Inc. Few people understand the tech industry and the tectonic shifts that periodically occur within it, better, and Bajarin has a unique ability to call BS on some of my wilder predictions. This year, I found we were mostly in alignment. The AI of everything You don't need me to tell you that Artificial Intelligence (AI) will continue its steady march into and through every part of our lives. There will be no bubble to burst, just bigger and better models, and some monetization through integrated advertising in our prompt results. It's likely that OpenAI, the current generative AI market leader, will deliver GPT-6. This will be a massive leap in computational power and reasoning. Bajarin agreed, telling me he'd been "hearing it will be significant." The question, though, is if this will be the first baby step in our long walk to Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), the form of AI in which the systems think and act more like us. Sign up for breaking news, reviews, opinion, top tech deals, and more. Early this year, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said the path to AGI was already solved ; but since then, Altman has distanced himself from a declaration of achieving AGI partially because he thinks the term, perhaps like the soul or human consciousness, has lost meaning. Maybe that's why Bajarin and I were a little out of alignment on AGI. I predicted we'd see the first clearly definable signs of it next year. "Not in 2026. AGI still has a lot of work to be done on processing speed and software. My personal belief...

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