AI Expands, Becomes More Specialized in 2026,Report Forecasts

AI is no longer just a trend — it’s the trend. 

Gartner’s top technology predictions for 2026 are dominated by new forms of artificial intelligence, underscoring how deeply AI will influence organizational priorities, decision-making and workforce strategy in the year ahead.

With AI supercomputing, organizations can tackle complex, data-intensive workloads with new levels of performance, efficiency and innovation, the report says. Using AI supercomputing, biotech companies “are modeling new drugs in weeks instead of years,” Gartner analyst Tori Paulman says. 

Multi-agent systems are collections of AI agents that interact with one another to achieve complex goals. Domain-specific language models are fine-tuned on specialized data for a particular industry, function or process. Unlike general-purpose AI models, domain-specific models deliver higher accuracy, reliability and compliance for business needs, Gartner says. 

AI security platforms apply guardrails, monitor AI activity and help companies enforce policies for how they use AI. AI-native development platforms can create software faster and easier than previously possible. 

Confidential computing will keep sensitive data private even from infrastructure owners, cloud providers or anyone with physical access to the hardware, Gartner’s report says. Physical AI powers machines and devices that sense, decide and act on their own — such as robots, drones and “smart” equipment. 

Another trend for 2026, digital provenance helps companies verify the origin, ownership and integrity of software, data, media and processes. Geopatriation reduces geopolitical risk for companies by moving their data out of public clouds and into local options such as sovereign clouds, regional cloud providers or the organization’s own data centers. — Greg Beaubien