Business world predictions for 2026

0:00As a founder, you're constantly wearing multiple hats, usually at the same time. but the most successful leaders have learned to hand a few of those hats off to the right people. That's where Upwork shines. It's a one-stop shop to find trusted freelance talent across IT, web dev, design, and admin support. And it's built to be simple. Register for free, connect with freelancers who match your style and pace, and hire them with industry low fees. Upwork makes the whole process easier, more affordable, and way less stressful. If your business is ready for that next level, Upwork has the talent to help you get there.

0:39Visit Upwork.com right now and post your job for free. That's U-P-W-O-R-K dot com. Upwork dot com. As your company scales, the hardest part isn't ambition, it's alignment. That's why Atlassian built the Teamwork Collection, an AI-powered teamwork platform designed to help teams move faster together. By connecting Jira, Confluence, Loom, and Rovo, teams can easily align work to real business goals, plan and track progress together, remove knowledge silos, and access the real magic of AI plus human collaboration. Visit Atlassian.com slash Team Changer to learn more. That's A-T-L-A-S-S-I-A-N.com slash Team Changer.

1:33Hey everyone, Bob Safian here. Welcome to a special episode of Rapid Response. We're going to do a slightly different format. And for that, I'm joined by someone who I have eagerly, eagerly wanted to introduce to you on the show. It's a Rapid Responses producer, my colleague and friend, Alex Morris. Alex. Hey, everyone. So what are we going to do? Well, Bob, you have an article of your predictions for 2026 running on Fast Company. We are actually going to link to it in our show notes. But for now, anyway, I wanted to dig through it with you. So you're going to interview me then. I get to be on the hot seat.

2:13We're turning the tables. This is the first time that we've done this on the show before. And I'm curious to know, what was the impetus? What was the inspiration for you to, you know, even start to work on these? You mean the predictions part of it? I was thinking back to a story that I wrote as a reporter back in the day, let's say. I did a profile of a market strategist on Wall Street, this guy named Byron Ween, who at that point worked at Morgan Stanley. and he did an annual sort of year predictions, you know, 10 predictions for the year ahead. And it always got a lot of attention was one thing, but sort of listening to him talk about how he thought about the predictions, that like, you know, some of the predictions were purposely a little bit outlandish because he wanted to spark dialogue.

3:07So that's the spirit that I bring to this. I don't have a crystal ball. You know, I'm not going to have everything be right here, but I do hope that some of the topics that you and I get to talk about and I write about in this Fast Company post that sort of get people's wheels spinning about what might be possible in the year ahead. Well, let's get started then. All right. With your first prediction, it's interesting because NVIDIA, Microsoft, Apple all had stronger earnings reports than many sort of expected. And yet your first prediction is that you believe tech stocks will stall this year. How's that?

3:45Yeah, I know. I know. And listen, I'm not the only one who's saying that maybe there's an AI bubble. I realize that. But I do feel like this is a surprise if you look at the way people are actually investing. These stocks have not gone down. They are the center of the stock market. I don't presume that they may not continue to be the center of the stock market, but there is a lot of hope and possibility in these AI, particularly related names. And the end users of AI right now, like the average company, is not necessarily getting tremendous value out of AI. I don't presume to say that they won't ultimately, but the end user of what NVIDIA is creating is not showing a lot of value.

4:39And at some point, that's got to be reckoned with. And so that's why I think these highly valued stocks that are valued for perfection, they may stall. Again, it doesn't mean they're going to crash, but having a lot of headroom above them seems less likely to be at this point. It makes me think of when you spoke to Grant LaFontaine on the show a few months ago. The CEO of What Night, yeah. Where, you know, he was talking about how he feels pressure to work a lot with AI, even though it's not necessarily solving a customer issue for him at the moment. And I'm curious whether you feel like more broadly, this investment in AI before value is seen, how much of that is peer pressure throughout tech?

5:27I think it's peer pressure, not just tech, but also, you know, for any company, because the investment markets are so obsessed with the value you're getting from AI. I mean, I think the big turn for AI's impact will be when it's generating new kinds of ideas and new revenue and not just sort of marginal cost savings. I think what is happening a little bit right now is that companies are hoping they can generate enough cost savings from some sort of smaller implementations of AI, and then they can use that money for more experimentation that could end up bringing more innovation. But we haven't reached that stage yet.

6:10And so, you know, there's a lot of caution quietly, not necessarily when I'm recording with all of these CEOs. Grant was willing to say it. But certainly more quietly, I think there's some more uncertainty about, well, what's the impact really going to be on my bottom line, on my business, certainly over the next 12 months. And when we think about this moment of when the rubber meets the road, it kind of brings us on to your next prediction, which is that AI will be an excuse for layoffs more than a cause for them. To me, I think there's been increasing talk about how AI will dramatically change jobs for people.

6:50I think it is already doing and it will continue to. And there's a concern, a legitimate and I think real concern that the whole structure of our labor force will be modulated based on how AI is implemented. But I don't really see the use cases in such high demand right now that AI is actually going to be the cause of people losing a lot of jobs right now. But I do think that a lot of companies are going to do, may do layoffs, may consolidate, may try to right-size their business because of changes that are going on in the economy or their sector. And, you know, they'll attribute that to AI because that seems like a forward-looking positive thing as opposed to being our business isn't in good shape and so we have to pull back.

7:37It's better for them to frame it as being related to AI. I'm not saying people are lying. I'm just saying for those of us who are watching these things as 2026 unfolds, I think we have to be more thoughtful and study a little bit more each time one of these announcements comes out. You know, what's really at play here? In September, Mark Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce, cut 4 ,000 customer support jobs. He said that was because of AI agents. Now, you know, to me, it sounded quite early of the capabilities of AI agents to fill that many roles. Do you believe him or no? Well, here's what I'd say.

8:22You know, Mark was on this show in 2024, like a year ago, talking about his big investment in AI agents and why they thought they were going to change everything. And he floated the idea of renaming the company from Salesforce to Agent Force, which he has been floating again more recently in an interview with Bloomberg. I don't think the uptake on on Salesforce's agent related products has been quite as robust as he hoped they would be. Does he maybe need to pull back on some of that? I like how how do you say is he lying or not if it's related to the agents? I'm sure it's related to his agent business.

9:02You know, there's a vested interest for him and for Salesforce in making a world of agents as talent in the future, you know, happen. I think that's really what the motivation is of what he's doing and the way he's talking about it. So what you're saying is we need to see the receipts from Benioff and that he should tag us on social media with the receipts. And then we'll decide. I mean, listen, I think there are a lot of reasons why CEOs make choices and they don't talk about all of them. But, you know, the branding and the implications of what it is, the messages, the optics can be as important as the practicalities.

9:43All right. Let's move on to the next prediction. You have predicted that in 2026, cyber hacks will reach crisis level. So here's the thing. When I have talked to tech leaders at cybersecurity companies, they are using AI quite extensively to amplify the products that they have, the security that they can offer. And they say they can identify and find threats that they could never find before, that it's faster, that it's quicker. And I don't take issue with that. I totally I totally believe that. At the same time, I think the the, quote, bad actors have access to AI also. Right. And the the volume of of attacks and of feints that are that are underway for businesses, for each of us as individuals, the scams going on there, they're growing exponentially.

10:40It's just gotten a lot easier and cheaper to do an attack. So the assumption of these cybersecurity firms is essentially my AI is better than their AI, right? Like my AI safety is better than their AI hack. And I'll talk about this two ways. On the one hand, yeah, they're probably right. They're the experts. I'm not a cybersecurity expert. So sure, they're the experts. But not everyone can afford or is spending on the high-end cybersecurity that they offer. So for smaller companies, even mid-sized companies, us as individuals, we will be more exposed because there's going to be more stuff coming our way.

11:24The turn on that is, well, what if their AI at the expert level isn't better than the AI of the hackers? You know, that assumption that our AI is better than their AI, what if that's not true? AI has tremendous power to be used for good, but it can be used for all kinds of purposes. And I think we're going to start to see a little bit more of that as we move through 2026. So you're saying, you know, the bigger companies are always more likely, I suppose, to be a target for hacks. However, they can afford the security to withstand it better, whereas mid-level and smaller companies will be left more sort of exposed.

12:04And therefore, will they actually be more of the targets, do you think? It's also that, you know, as the cost of attempting a hack and getting access to these AI tools goes down, right? It draws more people into the field of being a bad actor. And so while the more sophisticated folks may be like, yeah, I'm trying to get the big dog. I'm trying to get to the big companies. You know, there are a lot more people who are like, let me see what kind of stuff I can pick off at some smaller level. And I just think that, you know, that's what happens in the marketplace, right? Price goes down, more access comes in, more players come in, and it usually adds more competition.

12:49And in the world of competition, when it comes to security, I think that that puts more smaller and mid-sized businesses at more risk. Well, this kind of brings us on to the next prediction, which is electricity costs will drop. This one surprised me. Yeah, I mean, this is fairly speculative, I would say, but is inspired by me noting the volume of media attention that is going to the electricity drain that new data centers and AI is putting on the system and how it's driving up prices. And I want to say, like, AI does use a lot of energy and there are a lot of data centers being built and those will draw on the electrical resources of any community and any economy.

13:46But there are a lot of things that draw on the electricity needs and the energy needs of a country. I worry that this is getting oversized attention. And at the same time, I think that there are other things in our electrical grid that are being updated, that are being improved. There are things that are certainly happening in the creation of new energy sources. Certainly, President Trump wants to drill baby drill, as he's been saying. So there is more supply coming in certain ways, certainly around the world. Again, local electricity prices may be one thing, but I do see the possibility for energy prices to be moderated in 2026.

14:33China has really led green energy around the world. What are the stakes of the U.S. losing that race? Nationally, like the United States is, you know, is one of the largest producers of energy globally. And so we are self-sufficient in our own energy needs. Right. And on a global front, China needs to import energy. So this is why they have had an incentive to build their own, you know, more renewable, more local power. But they are in the process of that. As with any new endeavor, they are moving ahead faster on certain kinds of innovation. So, yeah, China's China's making strides and China can because they have a national policy that is geared to that.

15:25And the U.S.'s national policy right now seems to be much more to emphasize the carbon base. I think in the long run, it would be better for us to be more balanced because it seems like that's where the rest of the world is moving. Europe also. But, you know, that's a decision that's being made in a different house than the one I live in.

15:51This is Mike Nicholas, Capital One business customer and co-founder of Ansett Uncles, a plant-based restaurant and community space in Brooklyn, New York. And he's telling us how they started a product line. We already had a space in the community. The food was an extension of our lifestyle and our values. So we know we wanted to create something that was an offshoot to that. Our pepper sauce. That's my grandmother's recipe. That's like a liquid gold, right? If someone wants to approach us and ask us, what do we do? We provide flavor. Growing a product line is no small investment, but Mike and his wife and co-founder Nicole were able to manage with the help of their Capital One Business card.

16:29Working with Capital One Business, we're able to leverage our limits and utilize those points, making sure we can continue the scale at the speed that we needed to go. To learn more, go to CapitalOne.com slash business cards.

16:49now your next prediction i would love to move on to as somebody who myself has moved to the u.s not originally from here your next prediction is that u.s immigration numbers will rise now that goes against a lot of the noise that we've seen over the last year what has inspired that this is probably more a hope than it is a prediction. And when I look at data on the American, the U.S. population overall, there is broad consensus that the U.S. needs to have a strong border and also needs to have an open, fluid, and defined immigration policy. In other words, It's not the zero immigration that the Trump administration has been talking about and pushing.

17:41But, you know, most Americans want there to be a way for people to come into the country, right? But politically, it's been hard to balance that. It's like if you say you want to have people come in, oh, then you don't want a hard border. And if you say you want a hard border, oh, you can't do the other thing. And so we've been in this kind of dichotomy that, you know, is unnecessary, right? It is possible to have a strong border and also to be able to offer visas to people who are students who are coming into the country who we want to attract. Right. Trump has an unusual opportunity to be able to bridge that that inconsistency that's been forced on us by politics because of his credibility on the immigration issue.

18:26And at the same time, it would could provide another leg for him and for his his acolytes to continue to keep the middle part, the independents in the country voting his way. It could help defang the Democrats in trying to use some of the negative repercussions of the immigration crackdown against him. Right. He could he could declare victory and move on to something that is a better, wiser, long term strategy. And I'm sure Donald Trump is listening to this right now and is saying, Bob, that's a great idea. He loves our show. He famously loves our show. He loves our show. You know, the pressure, though, on the government to make a change like that, who does that need to come from?

19:16Do you think it's going to be a consortium of tech companies because they need more talent from abroad or who? I think there are pressures that are going to be shared with the administration from businesses about talent that they're having trouble getting that they want to get. You know, I think there's cost that's related to the way we're doing it now that is going to be shared. And I hope that at some point those messages do get through because what has made America such a great place is it's been a magnet for talent like yourself, Alex. You're not you're not born here in the United States. Right.

19:53And I think that we need to be able to keep those doors open if we want to keep America, you know, keep America great. A major thing for people when they think about the midterms is going to be health care. And your next prediction is that Maha will succumb to science. What gives you that level of, I suppose, optimism? You know, the Maha movement has been, to my mind, you know, anti-science about the way they have attacked or reacted to vaccines and to certain other things. Um, there are studies that they are pursuing underway. And I hope as if those hold up to science as they should, that they might, I don't know, reeducate, rebalance some of the assumptions that some of the, the Maha that RFK Jr.

20:50You know, feels about, uh, about vaccines and some of the other things. I mean, listen, in the long run, I do believe that truth comes out and that science done appropriately, you know, will win. And so I hope that this year is a turning point in that. But again, this is more hopeful than practical, Alex. I just know that despite all the layoffs and despite the pullback on funding, there are a lot of people who are working really hard on continuing scientific investigation and continuing health research. And I believe, I want to believe, that those efforts will outweigh the political, you know, beliefs of the moment.

21:37Your next prediction seems to me a little bit more longer term than I imagined just this year. But it is that nuclear power will solve climate change. Talk me through this one, Bob. Listen, we always want a magic bullet to solve the intractable problems, right? And climate change is certainly one of our world's most intractable problems because even as we try to curtail our use of certain kind of energy and certain kind of fuels, demand continues to grow as the population does and as the affluence of the world population goes up. And so, you know, we need a solution. We would love, I should say, to have a solution that is not just do more with less, but is giving us the abundance that certainly a lot of people have been talking about this year.

22:32Right. You know, nuclear power has a bad brand. So it has not been a much used technology, but small nuclear reactors, there is more momentum going in that direction. And the thing that's gotten my attention, you know, we had a conversation with someone who's in the fusion energy. Now, fusion is different than fission, right? So for listeners, and I always get this confused myself, right? The nuclear power that we are used to, whether it's nuclear weapons or nuclear power plants, that is fission that is splitting an atom. Fusion is a different technology. It's bringing things together and releasing power.

23:16And it's always been this kind of apocryphal, like, wouldn't it be great if we could? But there have been advances in fusion technology, serious advances in fusion technology. My prediction really is that we're going to look back to 2026 as the year when that technology sort of came of age and when the seeds of, you know, a clean energy future, an abundant energy future became a reality. And that will be fission. That will be small nuclear reactors. Maybe it'll be hydrogen energy. It'll come from a variety of places. But I do think and hope that fusion has its moment in 2026 and we're able to build on that from there.

24:06your final prediction uh i will say started to get a rise out of me when i first read it because i'm a massive fan of football and of course the world cup is coming to north america this summer and your prediction is that the usa will win the world cup yes explain that because my eyebrows raised very quickly you think england is going to win the world cup is that what you're saying, Alex? I hope so. Maybe Spain, maybe Argentina, but maybe England. Let me explain my thinking on this. Team USA will not win the World Cup. I'd like to say that Team USA will win the World Cup. When I say the USA will win the World Cup, I'm really talking about the United States of America as a country, as host of this event, that this provides an opportunity for the brand of the United States to reassert, reestablish, you know, reinforce itself globally.

25:08We've taken a lot of hits. It's been, you know, there's a lot of uncertainty overseas about what people think the United States stands for. And I do think that this global gathering provides that opportunity for the U.S. to remind the world and remind ourselves what makes us special and what responsibilities that come with that. And I'm really hopeful and looking forward to us living up to all of that as the world gets to experience the World Cup America style. I will say, Bob, I am skeptical. I mean, people are not very happy that the U.S. is Americanizing parts of the World Cup by having a halftime show in the final.

25:53I just wonder how it's going to be received. the U.S. has not necessarily made fans feel welcome yet about flying in for it. And that's, you know, a core tenet of hosting a World Cup. Yeah, I mean, following Qatar as the host, you know, is both good and bad, right? It's like, oh, these are the kinds of countries that get to host, you know, the World Cup. Regimes that restrict a lot of things, right? Or you could say that in comparison, you know, people will be able to experience that even when things may feel somewhat more restricted in the United States, that there's still a level of freedom and opportunity that is second to none.

26:41The last thing that I wanted to ask you is, you know, you've spoken to me about this before, and you've spoken about it on the show, this idea that you started a career in business journalism out of this belief that business leaders could fill the gap in doing social good and making progress around the world. and you know this responsibility of leaders has diminished in the last couple of years do you feel like this year will we see the pendulum start to swing back or not really i've always felt like you know business is a vehicle for progress and and that businesses run the right way can be a vehicle for progress and i and i've tried to build my career around encouraging businesses and business leaders to use that mantle for good.

27:34In 2026, will we see more public voicing of, you know, business leaders stepping out of their lane, so to speak? I don't necessarily see that. I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing, provided that within their lane, within their organization, they are living to their values and they are encouraging their people and their teams and running their business in a way that is ethical and forward-looking. And I do think and believe and hope that that will continue to happen. Part of the reason I was drawn to business journalism as opposed to political journalism was because I thought politics had a lot of talk, but not enough happened.

28:19And whereas in business, you know, it was happening all the time and in many ways that politics followed business, not the other way around. The last year has been an aberration in that because of the activist nature of the Trump administration. But I think in America, in the long run, it will come back to being businesses being the driver and government following. And I don't think that's a bad thing necessarily. And certainly to have it be a balance, I think, is what's really the most healthy. Well, Bob, that was so fun going through those predictions with you. Thank you so much. And hey, Happy New Year.

29:01Oh, to you too. And to all our listeners. We really appreciate it.

29:12Meet Emily Warden, Capital One business customer and owner of Emily Warden Designs, a handcrafted fine jewelry store in Richmond, Virginia, that got its start in a dorm room. I said I was going to try it for a year. I signed up to do craft shows, trade shows, got into a few local boutiques, and then things just picked up from there. Emily's steady success at trade shows gave her the capital she needed to invest in a storefront. Every cent that was made was going back into the business. I was nervous that we weren't going to get enough traffic, but we had a huge turnout. With Emily Warden Designs firmly establishing itself in the Richmond community, Emily would need to significantly increase inventory in order to keep up with demand.