For so long as I (Max) can keep in mind, I’ve deliberately used the vacations to mirror and write my predictions for the long run. This 12 months, AI is a dominant theme, however how can it not be? It’s one of many greatest platform shifts in historical past. It’s nonetheless early, so it ought to solely get much more thrilling in 2026. Right here we go!
1. The massive gamers come again in a giant approach
We’re already beginning to see it with Google and OpenAI, however the incumbents let the newcomers into the fort, and so they’re lastly waking as much as the combat.
With AI, it’s simpler than ever to construct a product, however actual innovation comes from technique (GTM), networks, information, and competence (defensibility). It’s laborious for large firms to drive urgency the identical approach as a founder in a smaller enterprise, however we’re beginning to see there’s a lot extra that huge firms can do to innovate so long as they’re keen to do it.
Typically it means scraping earlier merchandise or cannibalizing income streams. The outcomes on the opposite aspect are price it, and Google is a hovering instance. In early 2025, folks had been ringing the alarm bell on Google. AI was driving visitors away from conventional search. If Google needed to compete, they wanted to destroy the tenants of “ten blue hyperlinks,” cannibalize probably the most dominant product traces within the historical past of capitalism (search and advertisements), and turn into AI native. They’ve finished precisely that. It might have harm the search platform within the quick time period, however it arrange Google to compete on the highest stage in a very powerful know-how innovation of our lifetime.
We’re seeing the beginning of this, and 2026 ought to compound. Listed below are a couple of different incumbents to make significant strides in 2026:
- Microsoft: This month, Satya Nadella introduced he’s taking over product obligations with Copilot. After showcasing early capabilities, Copilot has fallen woefully behind the market. Satya’s choice to get his fingers soiled—like Sergey at Google—is a sign to the market. Product will catch up, and Microsoft nonetheless holds one of many largest built-in distribution moats in know-how.
- Meta: this can be a intestine prediction. You may fault Meta’s AI execution alongside quite a lot of fronts, however you possibly can’t fault them for an absence of aggression. Latest expertise acquisitions, continued capital expenditure, and the advantages of a founder-led firm will start to repay for Meta.
- Uber: Waymo dominated the headlines in 2025, and for good motive. We consider the market is underestimating Uber, particularly alongside one vital vector: information. As AI continues to push into the bodily world, Uber is accumulating one of many deepest and most compelling information units of the bodily world. That may repay in 2026 (and past).
All the examples above are why we’ve by no means been “traction traders” at Seed. It’s a fantastic sign, however it’s not all the things. A quick begin doesn’t assure long-term success.
2. The CFO says it’s time for consolidation, however important TAM growth retains the social gathering alive
It appears like one other 2021 within the sense that each firm is out there shopping for AI proper now. The issue is, in some unspecified time in the future, the patrons will cease experimenting and begin consolidating.
Whereas we’re nonetheless within the early innings of AI, I do suppose, as per our first prediction, firms begin to say, “Effectively, this different vendor we use for X additionally does this, so why not simply bundle it there?” Or “What number of app builder instruments are we utilizing? Can we simply get an enterprise license throughout the enterprise for 1 of them?”
I do suppose there will likely be ache within the reconciliation of this. A whole lot of firms and traders are making selections on the idea of extrapolating short-term development charges ahead. There are causes to doubt the sturdiness, and we consider these considerations will come residence to roost in 2026.
All that being stated, it’s not all doom and gloom in AI. Thankfully, complete addressable markets are increasing quickly as know-how adoption is enabled in new areas, verticals, and segments of the market. This may carry the very best merchandise, firms, and groups by barely turbulent air in 2026. For us, the TAM growth piece is huge when underwriting a brand new funding.
Bonus addendum: we are going to see a re-underwriting of benchmark AI development charges. The previous two years have been characterised by headline-grabbing ARR numbers and development. Underneath the floor, there’s churn, non-recurring income quoted as ARR, and markets with shifting adoption cycles. There are additionally loads of firms rising quick, however throughout the constraints of typical enterprise deal cycles. We consider the investing market will catch as much as this in 2026. Whereas we gained’t name it the return of triple-triple-double-double, we are going to see some reversion to equilibrium with AI development charges.
3. The AI leap to {hardware} is wildly under-discussed
We’re nonetheless fairly a bit away from commercialization of robo-fleets, however we’re beginning to see use circumstances the place AI can increase what we do within the bodily world.
Wearables for trades service employees that enable them to diagnose in actual time, and so they get guided workflows on the way to repair their work (Plasma – extra on that one subsequent 12 months). Particular buyer assist working techniques like Telemetron that assist clients triage wifi-connected units they’ve at residence. Communication between unmanned and manned plane as our skies turn into increasingly congested (Oureon). We’re seeing an growth of edge computing as effectively. On the most important scale, you’ve firms like Armada constructing containerized, sturdy information facilities for governments and enterprises working within the harshest environments on the planet. On the opposite aspect, we’re seeing an acceleration of concentrate on on-device AI fashions for telephones, laptops, or some other private computing machine. Waymo is taking on San Francisco!
There are such a lot of extra use circumstances. We’re excited concerning the AI developments within the bodily world round us, not simply by the display screen. We anticipate 2026 to be the 12 months when the bodily world is introduced into the forefront of the dialogue round AI.
4. Pricing and packaging is turning into the Cinderella of the brand new AI period
We’re going to expertise a cloth shift in the usual SaaS seat-based pricing. It’s been talked about lots, however that is the 12 months the rubber meets the highway. We’re seeing high-growth firms get inventive with credit through outcome-based pricing, action-based pricing, and even credit-based pricing related particularly with POCs and churn threat accounts.
In 2026, it will go mainstream. What will likely be attention-grabbing is how incumbents react. If clients solely must pay when the product works, they’ll get fairly used to that. In the event that they’re selecting between two distributors and one is seat-based and one is outcomes-based, all else being equal, they’ll most positively pay per end result. Paid.ai is constructing the piping for these outcome-based pricing firms, grounded of their traction.
Beneath is an inventory a16z put collectively of iconic firms who shifted pricing meaningfully on the finish of 2025. I feel we’re going to see that boulder roll down the hill in 2026.
5. GTM turns into much more AI-native in 2026
The world of go-to-market has been reinvigorated previously 12 months. You might have GTM groups which can be vibe coding their very own tooling. AI bots for inbound leads and assist are making important positive factors in reliability and pace. search engine optimization is out, and GEO is in. Newer roles like Development Engineer and Ahead-Deployed Engineers proceed their uptick in headcount throughout firms past the early adopters.
We’re loving the resurgence. The issues we did within the 2010s really feel so dated now. Heck, issues we did in 2024 really feel dated now. Whereas the high-level playbooks nonetheless work (ICP choice, messaging frameworks, and many others.), how we execute has sped up and elevated our skill to scale in an enormous approach.
The very best half about that is that GTMfund, our LPs, and now our portfolio firms are all on the forefront of the brand new tendencies. It places us in a good higher place to be a price add to our founders. We’re going to be internet hosting extra founder occasions in 2026 (and past) for this precise motive. GTM continues to vary as quickly as we’ve ever seen it, and we’ll be internet hosting hands-on working periods with GTM leaders from our community pushing the envelope in AI GTM. Extra on what these will appear like quickly!
6. Consulting backgrounds are again in demand
McKinsey alum, rejoice! That is one thing we began seeing in our personal portfolio to shut 2025 and anticipate to see much more in 2026 and past. Ex-consultants have traditionally loved success within the startup ecosystem whereas additionally being comparatively maligned. The trope is that consultants don’t know the way to function in a startup surroundings—they simply know the way to inform you the way to function in a startup surroundings. Nonetheless, in as we speak’s AI-native world, we’re seeing a renaissance in demand for ex-consultants.
The market elements are pretty simple. In MIT’s State of AI report from August, they claimed 95% of enterprise AI deployments had been failing to showcase significant ROI. A whole lot of the problem was within the implementation course of. To succeed, it’s essential to embrace organizational change, embed deeply into workflows, and transcend flashy demos that don’t penetrate beneath the floor of a company. Ex-consultants sometimes thrive in a movement like this. We’re seeing demand throughout the startup ecosystem for CSMs, enterprise account managers, or forward-deployed CSMs / engineers with consulting expertise to assist their enterprise clients succeed.
Sooner or later, we anticipate plenty of software program to be managed by an agent-to-agent structure. You gained’t must implement the deep workflow and alter administration in an effort to go stay together with your AI platform, as a lot of the work will likely be finished by an agent on the opposite aspect. Nonetheless, for now, consultants as soon as once more stay within the solar.
7. An elevated acceptance of human-to-agent interactivity throughout B2B (and B2C)
Voice AI has been one of many hottest classes of funding and income development over the previous 12 to 18 months. And for good motive. The standard of the underlying fashions are bettering, and as a broader economic system, we’re realizing simply how a lot friction and misplaced financial worth happen within the easy apply of human communication and scheduling.
For instance, you’re seeking to get in contact with somebody in operations at an organization, however it’s Friday afternoon. You name, however nobody solutions. You e-mail however don’t hear again till Monday at lunch. You then schedule a name for Wednesday morning, the subsequent out there slot. You simply misplaced 5 days of productiveness with out blinking. Now multiply that friction by billions of potential communication factors per day. It’s monumental.
Now, think about there’s an AI agent on the opposite aspect of that communication line. They’re on-line 24/7/365. They don’t have time zones or holidays, and so they don’t get sick. They’re skilled on all the identical info a human is, with usually extra correct and higher recall. At first, the pushback to the explosion of voice AI was easy—does the human actually wish to speak to a bot?
We’ll cross that chasm in 2026. The know-how has improved to the purpose the place most voice AI platforms sound pretty human and pure. They’re extra responsive, extra correct, and on the finish of the day, usually get you to your required finish state extra effectively. We’ll see an enormous growth of voice AI throughout each nook of communication in 2026 – each B2B and B2C. And guess what? People will (largely) take pleasure in it.
8. The revolt in opposition to AI slop and the return of Good Quests
We’re ending on a constructive prediction. In 2022, Trae Stephens and Markie Wagner from Founders Fund wrote a seminal weblog put up: Select Good Quests. The premise is easy. Our greatest and smartest people needs to be compelled to decide on good quests. Resolve laborious issues that make the world a greater place, enhance human situations, or each.
This precept has knowledgeable our funding thesis at GTMfund. You may see it throughout our Fund II portfolio. Obvio is utilizing pc imaginative and prescient to enhance highway security. Oureon is constructing the superior interoperability layer for aerospace to make our skies safer. Assemble is constructing an AI-native workflow and operations platform for hospital techniques. Pairtu is revolutionizing affected person advocacy.
Nonetheless, that hasn’t been the case for all the market. There was loads of “AI slop” since ChatGPT launched in 2022. Some are surface-layer companies designed to seize money amidst a gold rush. Some are arguably net-negative contributions to know-how and finish customers (for one instance, see “Chad IDE” from the newest YC batch, which lets you gamble or swipe on Tinder when you code).
In 2026, we’re going to see a return of Good Quests en masse. AI is penetrating each facet of our lives. We consider there’s a cohort of formidable entrepreneurs on the horizon that can proceed pushing the boundaries of know-how—for good. They exist already as we speak, however the ecosystem has grown bored with the alternative aspect of the equation.
In GTMfund’s Fund III (and past!), we’ll be looking for the Good Quests – and we anticipate to see much more of them.
Tag @GTMnow so we will see your takeaways and assist amplify them.
ZoomInfo CEO Henry Schuck shared how ZoomInfo Copilot hit $250M in ACV simply 18 months after launch, whereas most AI pilots stall out. The playbook was unsexy however decisive: dogfood laborious, promote earlier than GA to check willingness to pay, launch slender with a transparent ICP, and scale post-sales capability early.
TechCrunch digs into how GTMfund is approaching distribution otherwise in an AI-first world, and a giant a part of that story is Paul Irving, Accomplice and COO at GTMfund. Paul has been shaping how the agency operationalizes GTM from day one – from how portfolio firms check, study, and scale distribution quicker, to how GTMfund itself runs with operator-level rigor
GTM 173: The PLG → Enterprise Playbook: Turning Product Alerts into 9-Determine Income with Adam Carr
Get a sneak preview right here. For the total factor, pay attention on Apple, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts by looking “The GTMnow Podcast.”
HockeyStack – closed extra income in This fall than in all of 2024, tripled headcount, landed its first Fortune 10 buyer, raised a $26M Collection A, and launched Blueprints. They simply launched Blueprints, their greatest product launch but. Blueprints analyzes hundreds of thousands of buyer journeys to floor the patterns that truly generate pipeline, then tells groups what to do subsequent. Section mapping, scoring fashions, and automatic workflows flip perception into motion, making pipeline creation much more predictable heading into 2026.
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- Vice President of Buyer Success at CaptivateIQ (Hybrid – Austin, TX / Menlo Park, CA)
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- See extra prime GTM jobs on the GTMfund Job Board.
Upcoming occasions you gained’t wish to miss:
- Above the Fold (for entrepreneurs): February 9/11, 2026 (Fort Lauderdale, FL)
- Spryng (for entrepreneurs): March 24-26, 2026 (Austin, TX)
- SaaStock USA: April 15-16, 2026 (Austin, TX)
- SaaStr Annual: Could 12-14, 2026 (San Francisco, CA)
- GTMfund AGM + Retreat: Could 14-16, 2026 (San Francisco, CA)
- INBOUND: September 16-18, 2026 (Boston, MA)
- Pavilion GTM2026: September 28-October 1, 2026 (NYC, NY)
- TechCrunch DISRUPT: October 13-15, 2025 (San Francisco, CA)
- GTMfund dinner chedule coming quickly!
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