I am sure you are thinking this too. What are the big expectations from AI in 2026? Rather than make wild guesses, weak assumptions, and delude myself, I spoke to several tech and AI executives about how they see the space evolving over the next 12 months. What lies before us is an open road waiting to be explored. They are closely watching the utility, infrastructure, enterprise sector, voice as an AI driver, cyber security and more. His words…
India is on a mission to deliver the impact of technology
“As we move towards 2026, India’s technology sector is entering a phase where scale, accountability and results matter more than speed alone.
“The industry has built a strong foundation on AI, cloud, cybersecurity and digital platforms, supported by deep talent and a mature ecosystem of startups, GCC and global enterprises. The next chapter is about converting potential into sustained business and social impact.
“AI adoption is becoming faster and more grounded in real use cases. Enterprises are asking clearer questions about productivity, flexibility, and trust. They expect technology to be seamlessly integrated into core processes, not sitting on the sides as an experiment. This shift puts the onus on the industry to design solutions that are secure, explainable, and aligned with long-term value creation.
“India is well-positioned to lead this phase. Our strength lies in combining engineering depth with domain understanding and execution at scale. As an industry, success in 2026 will depend on how well we collaborate across ecosystems, invest in skills and apply technology with purpose. The opportunity ahead is significant to strengthen enterprises, empower people and strengthen India’s role as a trusted global technology partner.” – Sindhu Gangadharan, MD, SAP Labs India, Head of Customer Innovation Services, SAP and Chairperson, NASSCOM
India’s AI data-center infrastructure
“2025 marks a turning point for India’s data-centre and digital infrastructure landscape. AI-led workloads have redefined facility design, shifting from traditional IT to GPU-intensive inference and real-time analytics that demand higher power density, advanced cooling and workload-aware operations.
“As we move into 2026, priorities are changing. Energy and efficiency are becoming strategic differentiators. Power availability, sustainable sourcing, thermal management will increasingly determine where investment flows and who gets the competitive advantage.
“Talent development is equally important – the industry now needs professionals who can bridge physical infrastructure with digital intelligence, understanding compute density, cooling, energy optimization and workload orchestration as an integrated system rather than separate domains.” – Suresh Rathod, President, Colocation, CtrlS Datacenter
AI progresses through experimentation
“As we look toward 2026, AI is moving beyond experimentation and entering a phase of maturity. In the coming year AI will become the backbone of enterprise architecture, reshaping software lifecycle development and redefining cloud consumption. At the same time, enterprise systems are undergoing a fundamental shift toward intelligent operations, while technological sovereignty is emerging as a strategic priority, allowing organizations to build resilient interdependence Inspiring.” – Pascal Brier, Chief Innovation Officer of Capgemini and member of the Group Executive Committee.
Conversational AI Agent
“Last year marked a clear inflection point for voice technology, with voice AI moving from real-world experimentation in creative workflows and enterprise use cases to everything from customer engagement and multilingual content to next-generation agent experiences. At ElevenLabs, this shift is reflected in the rapid growth of the Voice Actor Marketplace, which now supports more than 10,000 voices globally and creators. and connects enterprises with diverse, licensed, high-quality AI voice talent.
“Looking to 2026, the focus is shifting from standalone voice models to conversational agents that can create, understand and act on audio, video, images and text within a single, continuous experience.
“Voice has already emerged as a natural interface for human-computer interactions, and the next phase will be defined by agents that understand context, access knowledge, integrate with real systems, and respond in ways that feel timely and intuitive. As the quality of voice continues to improve, creating seamless and providing frictionless interactions will increasingly drive the differentiation that will allow these models to actually be used in real workflows. Makes it worthy.” – Carles Reina, GTM, ElevenLabs
AI reshapes the way cyber attacks work
“In 2026, AI will shift from an attacker’s ‘assistant’ to an autonomous force multiplier, fundamentally changing the way cyber attacks work. The past year was filled with AI contributing to basic malicious activities like social engineering, deepfakes, business email compromise and more. While this will continue as the baseline for threat actors, 2026 will be the year of real AI attacks. Threat actors primarily use Vibe They will increasingly use AI as a teacher or trainer to help them perform reconnaissance, but not because they don’t know how to launch a low-level attack.
“This reconnaissance will enable them to gather critical information about a target and create the specialized tools needed for scanning and exploitation. This attacker-AI synergy will reduce learning time and take the automated creation of hyper-scale cyber operations to new heights. – Grant Bourzicas – CSO, Cloudflare
Cybersecurity threats, and laws
“The Indian cyber security ecosystem is rapidly changing with advanced persistent threats (APTs) evolving into highly targeted, covert-driven campaigns powered by AI automation and sophisticated social engineering. Additionally, strict enforcement of cyber laws, including the DPDPA, will drive organizations to move beyond checkbox compliance towards holistic security strategies in 2026.
“Following the recent movement towards strategic cyber resilience solutions, enterprises are increasingly relying on adopting multilayered, human-centric security, AI-powered threat detection, robust email and data security, and governance frameworks aligned with regulatory mandates.
“Organizations that do not prioritize proactive security measures, employee awareness and adaptive technologies may face significant operational challenges and reputational risks in the emerging digital landscape.” – Bikramdeep Singh, India Country Manager, Proofpoint
AI adoption and practicality
“We expect agentic AI to move from capability to measurable impact in 2026. Indian enterprises have moved beyond the debate on the need for AI and are now focused on accelerating to scale with speed and purpose. Agentic AI is emerging as a trusted digital teammate, able to observe, decide, act and learn across business frameworks. From autonomous finance operations to conversational knowledge platforms, these intelligent agents are driving reinvestment beyond incremental profits.
“The winners will be those who combine this power with trust and talent – embedding ethical frameworks and reskilling their workforce to collaborate with AI. This is not just a technological trend, it is the foundation of a new era where humans and machines achieve more together.” -Aditya Priyadarshan, MD & Lead – AI, Accenture in India
a subtle change in the path
“2025 reinforced a simple truth. AI is no longer experimental. It has become fundamental to how organizations operate and compete. As we move into 2026, the focus will shift from simply adopting AI to putting it to work in ways that deliver measurable flexibility, efficiency, and customer outcomes. The question leaders are no longer asking is whether to use AI, but where it can create the most meaningful impact.
“At the same time, the cloud conversation is evolving. It is moving away from questions of ownership toward questions of governance. Who controls data, how it is protected, and where it can be processed is becoming a central concern. It is because of this shift that sovereign and distributed cloud capabilities are moving from niche needs to mainstream priorities for enterprises and governments.” – Faiz Shakir, VP and MD, India and ASEAN, Nutanix.
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