"It's been three years since OpenAI released ChatGPT and kicked off a surge in innovation and attention on AI. Since then, optimists have regularly claimed that AI will become a critical part of the enterprise software industry, and so enterprise AI startups mushroomed on the back of immense amounts of investment. But enterprises are still struggling to see the benefit of adopting these new AI tools. An MIT survey in August found that 95% of enterprises weren't getting a meaningful return on their investments in AI."
"So when will businesses start seeing real benefits from using and integrating AI? TechCrunch surveyed 24 enterprise-focused VCs, and they overwhelmingly think 2026 will be the year when enterprises start to meaningfully adopt AI, see value from it, and increase their budgets for the tech. Enterprise VCs have been saying that for three years now. Will 2026 actually be different?"
"A subset of enterprise AI companies will shift from product businesses to AI consulting. These companies may start with a specific product, such as AI customer support or AI coding agents. But once they have enough customer workflows running off their platform, they can replicate the forward-deployed engineer model with their own team to build additional use cases for customers. In other words, many specialized AI product companies will become generalist AI implementers."
Enterprises have struggled to obtain meaningful returns from AI investments, with an MIT survey reporting 95% failing to see ROI. Venture investors expect 2026 to be the year enterprises begin meaningful AI adoption, realize value, and increase budgets. Anticipated priorities include custom models, fine-tuning, evaluation, observability, orchestration, and data sovereignty rather than off-the-shelf LLM use. Many specialized AI product companies are expected to evolve into implementers or consulting partners, deploying teams to adapt platforms to customer workflows. Voice AI is highlighted as a high-opportunity area for more natural and efficient human–machine interaction.
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