If you listen to vendor marketing or conference keynotes, you’d think AI will be fully embedded in every job, workflow, and decision by the end of the decade. But that’s not how technology adoption actually works inside real organizations. As we look towards 2026, the more realistic story isn’t “AI everywhere,” but uneven AI adoption. Small groups of workers will fundamentally change how they work, while most others continue experimenting in the margins.
In this article, I’ll share the six predictions for AI in the enterprise I’m betting my year on. Taken together, you’ll see that I’m not describing a sudden step-change or a single breakthrough moment. There are no big bombshells here. Instead, they extend trends we’re already starting to see today: worker-led AI adoption, uneven usage across teams, and companies slowly realizing that their existing policies and controls aren’t enough. The real shift over the next couple of years is that these patterns will become so visible (and uncomfortable!) that organizations will no longer be able to ignore them.