A few months ago, I was scrolling through TikTok when I came across a video that stopped me in my tracks. It starred an animated frog, dressed in a wizard hat, robe, and pink nail polish, superimposed over a psychedelic background and speaking in a hypnotizing, ethereal voice. Its time to stop doing nothing, and start doing something,” he crooned. “I cast . . . motivation!
Id stumbled across the Pine Wizard Froga recurring character on the official TikTok account of household cleaning fluid Pine-Sol. Pine-Sols page, with its surrealist visuals and hypnotizing songs, is an example of what I call brain-rot-brand TikTok: Its a subgenre of digital marketing that rejects traditional advertising in favor of the kind of content that actually performs well on TikTok and Instagram Reels. Rather than selling products directly, brain-rot-brand TikTok embraces head-turning, often nonsensical choices, like fried visuals, abrasive design, and unsettling storylines, to spread brand awareness andpresumablyboost sales.
A few years ago, most companies wouldnt have touched brain-rot TikTok with a 10-foot pole. But as brands like Duolingo have built entire communities around bucking digital brand norms, others have gradually jumped on the bandwagon. Nutter Butter might be the first brand that went full brain rot, with hits like a Nutter Butter taking a trip to the playground on what appeared to be way too much acid. More recently, Brita, Amtrak, Sour Patch Kids, Brisk Canada, Mug Root Beer, and Dr Pepper have adopted some flavor of brain-rot branding.
[Images: Amtrak]
The strategy appears to be working. According to Clorox, which owns Brita and Pine-Sol, in the past year Pine-Sol was the only brand to crack the top 15 in TikToks #cleaning category (the other14 were creators with followings). In June, Britas TikTok content raked in more than 44 million views. In July, Amtrak scored its most-viewed Instagram post of all time by trying out a weirder brand voice. And multiple years into its brain-rot experiment, Nutter Butter still regularly amasses millions of views with its TikToks.
But as someone whos now likely watched hundreds of these videos (for research, obviously), Ive been wondering: Is brain-rot-brand TikTok cringe yet? As more and more brands try to break through the crowded attention economy with wackier social concepts, at what point does it stop feeling like theyre in on the joke and more like a desperate plea for attention?
To get to the bottom of this query, I rang up Ryan Benson. Hes the self-described social media menace who led Nutter Butters original brain-rot strategy, helped build Sour Patch Kidss uniquely threatening brand voice, and has since gone on to found his own creative agency, Loudmouth. We discussed Nutter Butter’s creepy 60s commercial, a tea brand that’s weirdly into cheese, and Dunkin’s horny spider donut.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Can you give a bit of background on the brand story you were telling with Nutter Butter? Why did it make sense to go so weirdeven weirder than Duolingo, which many people cite as the OG unhinged brand?
With Nutter Butter, our agency contract was for I think 23 Mondelz brands. Nutter Butter was a tier threethere were three tiers, so they were on the bottom.
Like a C-list snack?
Yes, exactly. And that meant the resources that were available to each brand were fully dependent on what tier they were. So tier one is Oreo, and as you can imagine Oreo has six agencies working for it and endless resources. There are ads on TV, billboards, all sorts of agencies. Nutter Butter had $2,000 in an expense account and me.
The narrative we were working with was, this is an old cookie, there’s not a lot of story here. What can we do to get people talking about Nutter Butter? And as we experimented with different formatsbrain rot being one of thosewhat we learned is people were left asking, Is Nutter Butter okay? And we were like, Hey, it’s not, How do I buy a Nutter Butter off the shelf, but they’re talking about this.
[Images: Nutter Butter]
So then we learned how to feed the conversations that they wanted to see. We picked up from the comments like, Oh, they’re talking about this aspect of the photolet’s make sure that we edit that into the next one. Or, They’re noticing that we put Morse code in the bottom of the image. Let’s make sure we put a message in a different coded language in the next one. It actually became a conversation.
Through that, we developed Aidan and brought back the Nutter Butter man from the 60s commercial, and we really started to reintroduce all these creepy analog horror themes. [Editors note: Aidan is an original recurring character in Nutter Butters videos, based on one of the brands biggest online fans.]
I think what some people miss when they’re like, Let’s copy and paste the Nutter Butter approach, is that we didn’t have to make things up. We were just pulling from the old commercial that exists already.
If you were consulting for another brand, how would you advise them on whether they should get in on this strategy?
The first question I would be asking is, Why? And if their reason is anything at all about Nutter Butter, I would tell them no.
What made Nutter Butter so successful is that we already had the audience that was receptive to the weirdness. We were playing off of things that we sawthey were posting, they were reposting, they were interacting onso we knew that our audience had a shared interest. We understood that some of the outrage that we saw was actually fanship. They were following, they wanted to find out, they were up for the antics. And somehow, at the end of the day, we actually influenced people to go buy more off the shelves. Once the client saw that it was actually somehow affecting sales numbers, they were like, Okay, go for it.
I encourage everyone to try out-of-the-box things and do new things for brands that haven’t had attention on them. But if the only reason you want to do it is because it worked for Nutter Butter, go back to the drawing board, because I don’t want you to waste your time. Sure, weird people might see it, but are you going to alienate all of your actual followers?
Are you also noticing more of this brain-rot-brand strategy online? If so, Im curious if there are any examples that come to mind.
Yeah, absolutely. One of my new favorite things that I’ve just developed as a personality trait is I attract people sending me things from brands that are going rogue or going brain rot, and they’re like, This is your legacy. You did this.
Off the top of my head, some brands that I love that are doing the brain-rot approach right now: Mug Root Beer is insane; Brisk Canada is insane; Dr Pepper is doing a big one right nownot necessarily analog horror vibes, but they are deep-frying images, they’re purposefully low quality. Its stupid, irreverent humor. These are promising to me because they all seem like they’re playing off the same energy of like, Oh, it worked in the comments last time. Brisk Canada’s thing is cheese. They make tea in a can, but they love shredding cheese onto the can. They love just copious amounts of cheese. It makes no sense. They don’t sell cheese.
[Image: courtesy Duolingo]
What kinds of mistakes do you see companies making when they try this out?
The thing that I see being a problem is that some of these brands have adopted this brain-rot strategy not understanding that it’s a means of communication that transcends traditional marketing. It does that for a reason, because we’ve developed this ability to communicate without selling. But then if a brand comes and co-ops this ability to communicate without selling in order to sell, theyre just kind of shitting on it.
I think that we will continue to see brands try to adopt this, but I dont know how many will be successful, because they have to understand that at the end of the day, they’re selling to people who experience real things and experience a real world outside. There are two different worlds operating, and the mastery is understanding how to join these communities and have conversations that are two-sided, instead of just showing up and being like, Hello, you dumb kidsyou like cheese on your tea? Well, I have a six-pack and it’s $29.99. You lose people. And for some brands, all of this is just a ploy to sell, so it will have issues.
[Image: Dunkin’ Donuts]
I don’t want to make you burn any bridges with brands, but I am curious if you’ve seen anyone try the more unhinged strategy in a way that wasn’t really working for you.
I don’t have any bridges here, so it may burn, but I’m not on the other side. Dunkin Donuts and their spider donut thing. They did a first post with an apology graphic, where they bolded certain letters and it spelled out spidey or something. That was actually duplicative of my work two or three years ago, where I posted an apology from NutterButter and bolded letters to spell Aidan. It was the exact same formatwith their logo and their colorsalmost down to the font. And then they did it again the next year.
This last year, they put a lot of budget into an experiential drive-through where they decorated the store, but I did see some commentary of fans being like, Hey, we’re kind of done with the horny spider donut thing. They’re milking it.
On that note, do you see a point at which we reach a critical mass of this kind of thing? Whats going to happen that makes people say, like, Ugh, this is stupidIm over it?
Honestly, sometimes I question if we’re there. I think back to the evolution of the Nutter Butter account. When I started, we were not immediately posting these deep-fried, demon-in-a-closet-covered-in-peanut-butter-type vibes. We were posting memes and text posts on Twitter and doing brand things. So it’s not like we’re a full anomaly and we’ve never done the things that other brand accounts have done. We tried everything. So I question how many brands right now are in the early stages of what we did and are about to hit a wall of responses of people being like, Meh, because there’s already comments on my old stuff being like, Okay, guys, you’ve played this out too long.
I also questioned the apology trend that hit a couple months ago. For me that was a turning point, because when we did it, we fully understood like, Hey, it’s not normal for brands to post an apology, it could go south. We understood this itself is a little bit risky, absurd, extreme. And then it devolved. I question how many brands are about to be shamed, because going back to what I was saying earlier, this method of communication is supposed to be human-based. I don’t know how many brands are pursuing it with that in mind. If you’re just deploying 15 assets in a campaign that are scheduled, you’re not doing any community management, so there’s no user insights in whatever you’re building. They won’t necessarily feel like they’re along for the ride. It will just be like, Oh, they’re doing an absurdist thing.
If you add in another degree of people doing it just because it worked for Nutter Butter, there’s no natural tie-in. Now you’re just throwing a pizza party for the marketing team. It’s hard to make a prediction, but I just feel like we’re going to see a brand like Palantir get in on it, or were going to see something dystopian, and then everyones going to be like, Weve had enough. I don’t think we’re there yet, but I feel like we’ve been bordering on it.
In a world where trust in institutions is at an all-time low and the pace of change is relentless, the most effective leaders are not those who hide behind polished press releases or corporate jargon. They are the ones who step forward with authentic storiesstories that reveal not just their vision, but their humility, values, and the messy realities of leading in uncertain times. Welcome to the era of the storytelling CEO, where transparency isnt just a buzzword, its the new leadership currency.
Why Stories Matter More Than Ever
For millennia, stories have been the glue that binds communities, shapes cultures, and helps us make sense of the world. Today, as organizations grapple with complex challenges, from digital transformation to climate change, data and strategy alone are not enough. Humans are narrative animals, and stories help us make sense of the world in ways that data and rational arguments often cant. Stories help to build trust, foster empathy, and catalyze action in ways that spreadsheets never will.
Transparency: The Foundation of Innovation Culture
Culture is critical to innovation. The storytelling CEO understands that transparency, sharing not just successes but also failures, doubts, and lessons learned, creates the conditions for new ideas and psychological safety. When leaders model openness through the stories they tell, they give permission for others to do the same, unlocking creativity and risk-taking across the organization.
For example, Satya Nadella at Microsoft championed a learn-it-all culture over a know-it-all one. By sharing stories of his own learning journey, Nadella made it safe for others to experiment, fail, and grow. This shift didnt just improve morale, it drove innovation and business results.
The Five Phases of Story-Centred Leadership
Based on my research and work with thousands of leaders globally, Ive developed a five-phase circular model for story-centred leadership:
Story Listening: Deep listening is the antidote to echo chambers and ego chambers. Walk in the shoes of others to gain empathy and perspective.
Story Building: Craft narratives that are clear, compelling, rooted in purpose and full of sticky details. The best stories answer, why does this matter? for every stakeholder.
Story Shaping: Practice and refine stories with feedback. Authenticity beats perfection, and people connect with whats real, not whats rehearsed.
Story Sharing: Stories are the connective tissue of change. Seed stories throughout the organization to grow a fearless, purpose-led culture.
Story Living: Embody the story through actions and decisions. The most powerful stories are those we live, not just tell.
Stories are not soft, they are our essential software
Many leaders struggle with the idea of storytelling, dismissing it as superficial or soft. As digital transformation efforts repeatedly fail due to lack of buy-in and cultural resistance, the need for narrative becomes clear. If we want our strategies to succeed, we must shift that mindset: stories are our essential software. As a previous Fast Company article notes, The six most common reasons digital transformations fail often boil down to poor communication and lack of shared visiongaps that stories can bridge.
Storytelling is not about spinning fairy tales or sugarcoating reality. Its about making meaning from complexity, surfacing the why behind the what, and inviting others into a shared journey. As one leader, Ian Ellison, told me, Ive learnt the hard way that they (stories) are essential in engaging people in sustainable change.
The Risks of Storytelling and How to Avoid Them
Stories can always be misused, something that were currently seeing on a global scale. In the wrong hands, they can become tools for manipulation or exclusion. The shadow side of storytelling is spin, distraction, and even outright deception. Thats why transparency is so vital. The storytelling CEO must be vigilant about grounding stories in truth, inviting diverse voices and challenge, and acknowledging complexity rather than oversimplifying.
Cross-Cultural Communication: Stories as Bridges
In our globalized world, leaders must navigate cultural differences with sensitivity and skill. Stories are universal, but the way theyre told and received can vary widely. The best leaders are those who listen deeply to the stories of others, adapt their narratives for different audiences, and use storytelling to bridge divides.
The Neuroscience of Storytelling
Understanding how our brains are wired for stories can make us better leaders. Stories activate multiple regions of the brain, making messages more memorable and emotionally resonant. As Fast Company has reported, understanding how your brain works can make you a better leader and storytelling is a key part of that tool kit.
The New Leadership Currency
In a world awash with information but starved for meaning, the storytelling CEO stands out. Transparency, rooted in authentic, purpose-driven stories, is the currency that builds trust, inspires action, and accelerates change. As leaders, our challenge is not just to tell better stories, but to listen, shape, share, and live them every day.
If you want to lead, start by asking: Whats the story youre telling? And is it true, transparent and worth following?
Five Ways to Become a Storytelling CEO
Listen first. Seek out stories from every corner of your organization.
Be humble. Share your failures and lessons learned, not just your wins.
Connect the dots. Use stories to shine a light on your North Star, linking strategy to purpose and values.
Invite others in. Make space for diverse voices and perspectives.
Live your story. Let your actions reinforce your words. And remember: you are speaking volumes before you even open your mouth!
When someone takes a shower at a new apartment complex in Washington, D.C., the water is heated in part by a brewery downstairs.
The mixed-use developmentpart of a larger new neighborhood called the Bridge Districtis designed to be as sustainable as possible. That includes using waste heat from commercial tenants like the brewery to save energy in the apartments.
[Image: courtesy Redbrick LMD]
Atlas Brew Works, a solar-powered brewery that serves craft beers, moved into the building in November. At most breweries, the heat thats generated from the brewing process would be vented outside. But in the new building, any hot water that the brewery doesnt reuse is sent into a heat exchanger, which transfers heat to the hot water loop for the apartments. (The water itself never mixes; tenants are not showering in brewery water.)
[Photo: Atlas Brew Works/Redbrick LMD]
Theyre still ramping up, but theyre starting to make a lot of beer, says William Passmore, managing partner at Redbrick LMD, the developer behind the project. So were using as much of that heat as possible. Were literally transferring the heat to support domestic hot water for all of the units throughout the building.
When the brewery is operating at full capacity and the complexs 757 apartments are fully occupied, around 60% to 70% of the heat for the apartments hot water can come from the brewery. The complex is also designed to be able to harvest heat from other businesses. A small grocery store that will soon open can share waste heat from its refrigerators, for example.
[Image: courtesy Redbrick LMD]
All of this means that residents can save money on energy bills, and the buildings have a lower carbon footprint. The heat exchange system is one piece of a larger sustainability strategy for the development, which is on track to become the largest net-zero carbon residential project in the U.S.
[Photo: Atlas Brew Works/Redbrick LMD]
The development is next to a metro station and a riverside bike trail, so residents can drive less. The all-electric buildings feature a solar array on each rooftopexpected to generate 228 megawatt-hours of electricity each yearwith renewable power purchased to cover additional energy needs. The developers carefully tracked the carbon footprint of construction, measuring the embodied carbon of every piece of material and even how individual construction workers commuted to the site.
They used materials like low-carbon steel and produced 40 different concrete mixes, carefully tailoring the amount of cement for each part of the building, which cut the overall carbon footprint of that material by 35%. In the next phase of the development, another new building will use mass timber construction.
[Image: courtesy Redbrick LMD]
Even though some parts of the process didnt necessarily cost much more from an engineering perspective, it took a commitment to make it happen. You need to have the mindset and the staff and the willingness to invest in it as an organization, Passmore says. Developers typically wouldnt go this far. It’s one of those things that doesn’t sound that difficult. [But as] you start to go and try and do it, [they’re thinking], ‘Oh, you know what? Let’s put this off for the next project, he says.
[Image: courtesy Redbrick LMD]
The developers theory: The work is worth itnot just for the environmental benefit, but because tenants are looking for more sustainable options. In surveys, the companies found that the renters they were targeting in their 20s and 30s wanted options like this.
It differentiates our product, so it helps us with lease-up, Passmore says. We hope it will help down the roadresidents will appreciate it and enjoy the lower utility bills. And perhaps theyll stay a little longer, so that will help us again.
Artificial intelligence certainly didn’t debut in 2025, but it was the year it really started to hit the mainstream. ChatGPT, at the start of the year, had between 300 million and 400 million average weekly users. By October, that number had doubled. Meanwhile, usage of other AI systems, including Perplexity and Google’s Gemini, saw similar leaps in usage.
Now, with 2026 on the horizon, people are wondering what’s next. Fast Company spoke to several analysts and industry experts to get their projections on what we can expect as AI’s influence continues to spread in 2026.
The bubble won’t pop
While the bears on Wall Street continue to talk loudly about an AI bubble, Wedbush’s Dan Ives says those fears are overblown and the AI trade will actually get bigger in 2026. Ives says the consumer AI revolution has not truly begun, and the expected rise of robotics in the years to come, as well as the long runway for corporate use and global expansion, will drive an ongoing tech bull market.
“This AI revolution is just beginning today, and we believe tech stocks and the AI winners should be bought, given our view that this is Year 3 of what will be a 10-year cycle of this AI revolution build-out,” he writes. “We expect tech stocks to be up another 20% in 2026 as this next stage of the AI revolution hits its stride.”
A leap in “lazy thinking”
Not all of the predictions around AI in 2026 are quite so bullish. Gartner sends up a red flag about people’s growing dependence on chatbots and their automatic acceptance of whatever those devices spew out. Through 2026, the analytics firm predicts, there will be an “atrophy of critical-thinking skills due to Gen AI use.” That, it says, will push half of global organizations to require AI-free skills assessments.
“As automation accelerates, the ability to think independently and creatively will become both increasingly rareand increasingly valuable,” Gartner writes.
Gen AI will move from stand-alone sites to search engines
Generative AI chatbots are how many people interact with AI. They don’t require any tech knowledge (although the more you know about how to phrase prompts, the more efficient they are), and they’re free. For tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity, you generally have to visit a stand-alone website to access them. In 2026 and beyond, however, Deloitte says that more people will begin to use generative AI that’s embedded within existing applications, like search engines. “In terms of daily use, accessing Gen AI within a search engine [when a search yields a synthesis of results] will be 300% more common than using any stand-alone Gen AI tool,” the consulting firm writes.
Rise of the robots
While humanoid robots in 2026 may not reach the levels Elon Musk predicts, we are likely to see a substantial increase in AI-driven robotics, Deloitte says. The number of industrial robots is expected to reach 5.5 million. That’s the beginning of a wavewhich could see annual shipments begin to increase until they reach 1 million per year by 2030. That increase, the firm says, will be driven by labor shortages and “exponential advancements in computing power.”
A legal tsunami
AI firms are already facing a number of lawsuits, most prominently involving cases in which plaintiffs argue that AI drove people to take their own lives. That has put a spotlight on the lack of guardrails around the industry. But to date, Washington has shown little interest in setting firm parameters for AI companies. (Some states are attempting to do so, however.)
Gartner predicts that by the end of 2026, there will be more than 2,000 “death by AI” legal claims. The upside of this tragedy, it continues, is that it could finally push regulators to focus on safety issues.
“Black box systemsAI models whose decision-making processes are opaque or difficult to interpretcan misfire, especially in high-stakes sectors like healthcare, finance, and public safety,” the analytics firm writes. “Explainability, ethical design, and clean data will become nonnegotiable.”
The design of the steel-ribbed umbrella has changed little since it was introduced in the 1850s, but the mechanical engineers and origami experts who made an umbrella that works by folding say they’ve finally improved upon it.
The $249 Ori umbrella has a frameless design with a laminate composite canopy, which fits into a 3.5-centimeter cylinder smart handle with an OLED display. That means there are no steel elements that can go haywire and leave you with a misshapen mess when you’re caught in a strong wind. It seems we finally have an umbrella that looks like it was invented in the 21st century.
The design team included origami experts who usually work in aerospace, research, and advanced deployable structures. And that’s where the key lay. The team used an origami technique called the the Miura-ori, invented by Japanese astrophysicist Koryo Miura in 1970, to replace the functionality of a steel frame. Miura-ori allows for a compact foldand it has since been used in satellites.
[Image: Ori]
“Everyone owns one, yet the umbrella is a forgotten object, stuck in the past. We wanted to turn it into a modern device: smart, intentional, premium, and engineered like a modern device,” Ori founder Modestas Balcytis tells Fast Company in an email.
The canopy feels solid when it’s open, as it’s not fabric stretched over a frame, but rather a single continuous origami surface.
[Image: Ori]
“When it opens, you can feel the geometry locking into place, turning a flat surface into a strong, self-supporting structure,” Balcytis says.
The umbrella is wind resistant, unlike traditional umbrellas that can fold and turn inside out. Oris canopy surface is also UV resistant and lasts longer than a ribbed umbrella, according to the company. The umbrella is available now to reserve and is expected to start shipping in spring or summer 2026.
[Image: Ori]
The Ori Umbrella is priced far above your standard pharmacy brand, and it’s being marketed that way: Promotional images look akin to those you might see for Dyson vacuums or Apple iPhones. The umbrella comes in blue, silver, and gold; charges with a USB-C cable; and opens and closes with a single click.
The company is pitching its product as an alternative to poorly designed ribbed umbrellas, which often break and don’t last as long. Ori says it has tested the umbrella through 400 to 500 folding cycles. This is umbrella as high tech, and the company says it has plans to design more products using the Miura-ori technique.
“Ori isn’t here to sell umbrellas, Balcytis says. We’re building a new language for folding objects.
I am not clairvoyant and have no crystal ball. But Ive got some predictions for 2026.
I learned about predictions from a master of the craft: Byron Wien, a market strategist who rose to Wall Street prominence in the 1990s for his annual Ten Surprises list. Back in the day, I spent several weeks shadowing Wien as a reporter, and the lessons have long stuck with me.
Wien said that the prediction game wasnt about being right. It was about identifying trends. He knew many of his surprises would never come to pass, at least not in the extreme form that he shared. But they sparked dialogue and got people to confront their assumptions. And every now and then, hed hit something spot-on.
In the spirit of Wien’s lists, Im sharing my own predicted surprises for the year ahead. Consider them provocations for discussion. And well see how it all plays out.
Im reminded of an insight Wien shared privately with me, as he ticked through the holdings in his personal investment portfolio. He said that he owned Investment A for Reason A, and Investment B for Reason B. And then he said that he owned Investment C as a hedge against everything else I believe. He knew that hed be wrong about some things, and was prepared to be wrong about everything. Ive yet to find a better approach for navigating a chaotic world.
Now, on to the predictions!
1. Tech stocks will stall
No oneand I mean no onehas a consistent record of correctly calling the stock market. But just this once, I have a feeling.
Yes, AI profits at Nvidia are astounding. Yes, the dominance of hyperscalers like Google and Amazon and Microsoft continues to grow. But the money being plowed into AI capabilities right now is not yet yielding significant incremental value for AI end users: the customers of hyperscalers.
So while a narrow group of very rich companies are pouring billions into AI development (and driving those huge numbers at Nvidia), it is not yet a tide that raises all boats. For tech stock valuations to climb from here, the value generated by artificial intelligence needs to broaden. If other tech cycles are a guide, theres usually a period of consolidation at some pointa plateau at best, a significant crash at worst. Id bet on the former, in part because AI investment is largely being pulled from cash rather than leveraged by borrowing.
Before you rush to sell all your tech stocks, a caveat: More than 15 years ago, early in my tenure as editor of Fast Company, we ran a cover with the headline Open Season on Apple. We outlined how competitors were coming at the company from all sides, and the risks that the still-in-charge Steve Jobs faced. Our analysis was keen. Our concern was flat-out wrong.
2. AI will be an excuse for layoffs more than a cause of them
The workforce will be dramatically reset by the expanded use of AI tools. But not in the next 12 months. For now, tech-driven workplace changes remain on the periphery. Despite the worry and uncertainty, AI so far has made workers more valuable rather than redundant. Still, that wont deter many businesses from citing AI as a rationale for 2026 restructurings that will have more to do with addressing overexpansion or evolving business practices than with AI bots taking over human jobs.
By pointing to AI as the culprit, business leaders will have public cover for their activities (it is a necessary adjustment to a new reality) and engage the ardor of investors (we are becoming an AI-first enterprise). Identifying which layoffs are truly tech-related and which are in response to failed business strategies will become a schadenfreude-based parlor game.
3. Cyber hacks will reach crisis level
When you talk to the CEOs of major cybersecurity firms, they extol AI as a security enhancer: a tool to identify never-before-seen attacks in never-before-possible ways. They acknowledge that bad actors are increasingly using AI in their exploits. But they contend that AI protection tools are more sophisticatedessentially, our AI is better than their AI.
I have no evidence to undercut that assertion. But it is also true that not every business or individual has the protection of a cutting-edge cybersecurity system. It is said that AI raises the floor on capabilities, and it certainly lowers costswhich means we are in for more attacks, better attacks, and more disruption. Only those outfits that can raise the ceiling on cyber defense will be better protected. And if those cyber pros saying our AI is better” are wrong? Then mind your bank accounts, crypto wallets, and power grids!
4. Electricity costs will drop
AI data centers have dominated headlines about energy prices and energy availability. But that masks a larger trend toward electrification globally, at a scale that far exceeds AIs demands. A decade’s worth of renewable energy investments around the world (particularly by China) is creating a baseline of energy self-sufficiency in parts of the developing world.
In developed countries, modernization of electrical grids will yield significant efficiency gains. And whatever your views on the environmental impact, the Trump administrations embrace of more fossil fuel drilling will increase supplies. So is all the media coverage of data-center power demands overblown? Hate to say it, but “yes.”
5. U.S. immigration numbers will rise
U.S. immigration policy has long been hostage to politics. The vast majority of Americans want to simultaneously protect the U.S. border from illegal crossings and facilitate entry for approved newcomers. But that commonsense approach has been stymied by partisan posturing. Yet just maybe, 2026 offers a window to square that circle. Donald Trump, by virtue of his hardline border position (and deportations), has the unprecedented opportunity to reset policy in a healthier direction. Heres why he might embrace that opportunity:
The economy benefits from the low-cost labor of newcomers.
Silicon Valley is desperate to remain a magnet for worldwide tech talent.
U.S. voters in both parties support a commonsense mix of strong borders and open-entry rules, especially among Latino voters who supported Trump but have become disillusioned.
A balanced remaking of immigration policy would defang a key Democratic critique and rallying cry.
6. MAHA will succumb to science
Government health websites have recently added language that connects vaccines to autisma core tenet of U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., despite bare scientific evidence. But there are othr signals that, as Kennedy learns more about how the health research communities actually work, he is becoming more open to reconsidering some of his assumptions. Vaccines and autism may remain a bright line for MAHA, but as 2026 unfolds, the value of the FDA and the CDC and other public health entities will take a growing role in U.S. health policy.
7. Nuclear power will solve climate change
We all want a silver bullet for intractable challenges, and they rarely exist. But there is a chance that breakthroughs in nuclear power can do just that when it comes to climate change. There have been important advances in using nuclear fusion to generate powerthe safer, less discussed, and more prospective cousin of nuclear fission, which is responsible for all current nuclear reactors (as well as nuclear weapons).
In 2026, the advances in nuclear fusion are poised to reach a tipping point, opening the way to broadscale commercial applications. While it will take years for a nuclear fusion industry to establish itself and measurably impact the direction of global climate change, we will look back at 2026 as the beginning. At least I hope so!
8. The U.S. will win the World Cup!
Lets be clear: I am not predicting that Team USA will win the World Cup. That would be awesomebut its unrealistic, given how the U.S. mens national soccer team has performed in international play. But as a host of the World Cup, the U.S. as a nation will make the most of a tremendous opportunity to reestablish the brand of the United States on the global stage. After the disruptions of tariff wars, the U.S. brand is in an uncomfortable position heading into 2026. What the World Cup offers is a window for the world on what makes the U.S. special, desirable, and worthy of global esteem.
Am I talking about propaganda? Maybe some might see it that way; I like to think of it as patriotism. The World Cup is a test case for the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles, the ultimate spectacle to highlight Americas leadership model globally. Heres hoping the World Cup sets the right tone.
For venture capital, 2025 was all about artificial intelligencea trend that’s all but certain to carry into 2026.
More than half of all VC dollarsand 36% of total dealsnow flow to AI companies, according to a recent Silicon Valley Bank report. Crunchbase recently reported that 14% of all global venture investment in 2025 went to AI giants OpenAI and Anthropic. The year also saw huge deals like a $2 billion seed round raise by Thinking Machines Lab, the AI startup founded by former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati.
AI deals are also often closing quickly, with investment rounds that once would have taken weeks to close being handled in a manner of days, says Tim Tully, a partner at Menlo Ventures. You’re seeing people raise these large rounds with no decks, which is kind of shocking, or not even absolute clarity around precisely what the company is going to do, he says. Youre seeing funding of teams over what the team is doing.
But even amid speculation that the industry could be in a bubbleand some signs of public fatigue with the technology thats snuck into everything from therapy sessions to childrens toysinvestors and industry observers say the AI push will continue in 2026.
TAM explosion
In some ways, AI mimics the investment wave around other recent transformative technologies, like the rise of the PC, internet, and mobile phone. New technologies come, and they’re transformative, and that drives a lot of investment, says Steven Neil Kaplan, a professor at the University of Chicago who studies venture capital. Some of them work out, some of them don’t, and hopefully the world becomes more productive.
But Michael Carmen, co-head of private investments at Wellington Management and the coauthor of a venture capital outlook report the firm released in December, says AI companies have recently been growing revenue at a historically fast ratequicker than previous generations of software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies. Widespread internet use has given new AI products essentially instant access to a huge potential market, Carmen adds, noting, When you think about the [total addressable market] of AI over the longer term, it could be the largest TAM of anything that we’ve ever seen in technology.
AI is increasingly competing with traditional SaaS businesses for both customers and investors, says Saagar Bhavsar, partner at Begin Capital. For one thing, artificial intelligence has businesses wondering if its more viable to build software tools in-house with the aid of new coding assistants and other AI agents.
If your cost of building the software and time of building the software is going close to zero, the whole idea of SaaS disappears, says Sergey Gribov, general partner at Flint Capital.
Even without AI, some companies have begun to reconsider the sprawling set of cloud services theyve signed up for over the years, including deals they signed during the chaos of the pandemic shutdowns, Bhavsar says. And investors are taking note. Few people are calling themselves B2B SaaS investors anymore, even if they did that historically, he says.
Bhavsar says VC firms and their investors are showing an increasing appetite for new kinds of opportunities, including investments in computing hardware, data centers, physical computing, and robotics. Theres also a rising interest in so-called AI roll-ups, popularized by VCs like General Catalyst, where VC-backed businesses buy services businesses like IT companies, call centers, or accounting firms with the goal of making them more efficient through AI adoption. Its historically more like private equity investment, but the tech tie-in has made it appealing to the VC world.
The most interesting part right now is that any type of deal can be a VC deal, Bhavsar says. Any pitch can be a VC pitch if they pitch it right.
AI models, running on powerful graphics processing units like the ones that have helped chipmaker Nvidias market value skyrocket, could become the basis for a wide range of applications. (Its similar to the wave of software developed atop Microsoft Windows and Intel chips in the PC era, suggests Carmen.) VCs are looking to invest in companies building those AI-powered apps, though theyre also still enthusiastic about the frontier labs developing the models and core technology that help AI process text, images, video, and sound. That market, after all, still sees fierce competition among companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google, and new startup labs emerging like Muratis Thinking Machines or Tokyo-based Sakana AI.
I think there will be a lot more of these people coming out of the bigger names, or researchers coming out of academia wanting to start these research labs, says Christine Tsai, founding partner and CEO of 500 Global.
Theres also roomand VC appetitefor new, innovative AI models for other areas besides language and image processing, like autonomous vehicles and robotics. We believe there’s going to be a company that’s going to build the robotic brain, if you will, that will power many different apps, many different use cases, says Janelle Teng, partner at Bessemer Venture Partners.
Fintech, defense tech, and the rest
Still, AI hasnt completely captured the VC sector. Other areas seeing investor interest include fintech, particularly after the 2025 IPOs of companies like Klarna, Circle, and Chime, as well as space and defense tech, Teng says.
Space and defense startups also benefit from the Trump administrations push to overhaul military procurement and move business away from big defense contractors, while fintech startups may take advantage of the administrations deregulatory approach to finance.
VCs that in the past wouldnt have invested in defense tech have also been encouraged by the success of Anduril, according to Carmen, who notes that another area of excitement for VCs is health tech, including wearable technology and other tools that help provide consumers with information to manage their health.
One open question for VCs and other startup investors is whether the IPOs and acquisitions that characterized 2025 will continue into the new year. There was a lot more activity and liquidity in the markets, and we saw it in our own portfolio, in contrast to years prior, where it was extremely dry and felt like things were still frozen, Tsai says.
A number of big startups are reporedly preparing for IPOs, including AI companies OpenAI and Anthropic and Elon Musks SpaceX. Their success could spur more initial offerings. Those transactions provide early-stage investors with funds for the next round of investment, though with big companies staying private for longer than in previous tech booms, there are often other ways to sell stock through company tender offers and other private deals. And, if recent activity is any indication, theres no shortage of investor cash pursuing stakes in startups, particularly around AI.
Only time will tell, of course, which of those investments will prove wise, and whether the ever-escalating valuations of so many AI companies will last. The thing that’s hard to know is, are we in 1997, or are we in 1999, says Kaplan. VC investments in 97 did very well. VC investments in 99 did horribly.
2026 will be a crucial inflection point for businesses. The data are strikingthe proportion of employees using AI in their role in the U.S. doubled between 2023 and 2025. Across the Atlantic, 30% of EU workers are already using AI in their jobs. And according to Gartner, by 2026 more than 100 million workers will collaborate with robo-colleagues.
The question for the coming year, then, is no longer whether AI will transform your organization, its whether your leadership team will guide that transformation thoughtfully or let it happen haphazardly, tool by tool and team by team.
I have spent much of the past year working with my research team and industry partners to think through the most pressing challenges organizations face as they implement AI at scale.
Drawing on this work, I have identified seven key priorities for leaders preparing for 2026. These arent isolated tactics but interconnected imperatives that, taken together, provide a road map for building resilient, adaptive, and human-centered organizations in the age of AI.
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1. Embrace Regenerative Leadership Principles
Traditional leadership models that focus on efficiency and extraction are creating burned-out workforces and fragile organizations. As AI increases the temptation to pursue short-term gains, leaders must shift toward regenerative approaches that actively restore and enhance human, environmental, and technological resources.
Regenerative leadership means moving beyond sustainability to create systems that actually improve over time. This involves:
Adopting systems thinking to see your organization as an interconnected ecosystem
Prioritizing employee well-being alongside productivity
Measuring impact beyond profit to include ethical AI usage and community impact
Companies like Patagonia, Interface, and Unilever have demonstrated that this approach doesnt sacrifice performance. Rather, it enhances it through improved brand loyalty, employee engagement, long-term resilience, and higher growth.
The key is recognizing that AI should augment human potential, not exploit it. Leaders who build purpose-driven, people-centered strategies will create organizations that dont just survive disruption but evolve through it.
Read more: The age of AI requires a new kind of leadership
2. Transform Your Organization, Not Just Your Training
Most organizations treat AI reskilling as a training problem. But AI will cause systemic change that affects virtually every function and workflow, so preparing employees for the coming revolution requires more than just teaching them how to use AI tools. Fundamentally, it requires organizational redesignreimagining what work looks like in the AI age and transforming the organization to enable that work.
Success requires workin in three interconnected dimensions:
Rebuilding the infrastructure of work (providing the tools, data access, and workflow redesigns that make AI adoption possible)
Redesigning interconnected roles across the organization simultaneously (because when one role changes, every connected role must shift)
Cultivating a learning culture that prizes experimentation over perfection and treats failure as data rather than disgrace
Read more: What AI reskilling really requires
3. Master the Art of Leading AI-Augmented Teams
Throughout history, the core competence of leadership has always been guiding humans to achieve defined goals. But in the age of AI, leadership will take on a new meaning: leading hybrid teams in which humans and AI systems work side by side. Leaders must learn how to leverage the unique strengths of each while creating the context in which those unique strengths multiply by working in concert.
In order to succeed, leaders must:
Personally engage with AI tools themselves, so they can understand and eventually model effective collaboration
Cultivate clarity of purpose to discern what is actually worth doing in a world in which AI makes everything possible
Become moral agents capable of navigating urgent ethical questions surrounding the use of AI
Develop the enhanced emotional intelligence needed to guide teams through an often unsettling transition
Read more: The 7 secrets to successfully leading AI-augmented teams
4. Build a Balanced AI Portfolio: Moonshots and Mundane Wins
Successful AI transformation requires a well-balanced innovation portfolioa deliberately diversified mix of initiatives spanning different risk levels and time horizons. Leaders must grapple with big-picture questions about industry transformation while simultaneously identifying tactical opportunities for near-term deployment. The immediately practical projects create the foundationand fundingfor more ambitious undertakings.
Evaluating which initiatives deserve resources requires systematic assessment across multiple dimensions: technical feasibility, true investment costs (including organizational attention), risk-reward balance, alignment with core purpose, and realistic timeframes. In our book Transcend and a companion piece in Harvard Business Review, we provide comprehensive toolsthe OPEN and CARE frameworksfor this strategic evaluation and portfolio management.
Critical to all of this is engaged leadership at the C-suite level. CEOs cannot simply delegate AI projects to technical leaders. Instead, they must orchestrate the entire innovation portfolio to maintain strategic coherence.
Read more: Why your organization needs both AI moonshots and mundane wins
5. Protect Your Organizational Uniqueness
When everyone uses the same AI tools that have been trained on the same public data, outputs converge toward generic mediocrity. The quirks, the specific language, the unique ways of thinking that define your organization get smoothed into statistical averages.
Competitive advantage in 2026 will come from authentic differenceleaning into what makes you, you. You can do this by:
Auditing your uniqueness: Identify what is different and distinctive about your organization.
Creating proprietary datasets: Whenever possible, use internal data rather than generic datasets that everyone has access to.
Establish AI-free zones: Maintain places where only humans get to operate.
Adversarial prompting: Use AI to critically evaluate your conclusions rather than to confirm them.
The goal isnt to reject AI but to use it strategically while preserving the distinctive elements that make your organization valuable.
Read more: How AI is creating a crisis of business sameness
6. Reinvent Middle Management for the AI Era
AI is eliminating traditional middle-management functions at an unprecedented rate. Gartner predicts that through 2026, 20% of organizations will use AI to flatten their structures, eliminating more than half of current middle-management positions. And by 2028 and 2029, AI-driven jobs chaos will force organizations to reconfigure, redesign, split, or fuse more than 32 million jobs every year.
There are significant efficiency gains to be made here. But organizations must be careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Rather than simply trying to eliminate as much of middle management as possible, the task is to streamline it intelligentlymiddle management is still important, but its role must be fundamentally reimagined.
Orchestrating AI-human collaboration: Understanding how to integrate AI with humans
Serving as agents of change: Guiding organizations through continuous AI-driven disruption
Coaching for a new era: Mentoring employees through constant reskilling and role evolution
To successfully navigate this transformation, organizations must reskill middle management to enable them to succeed in their reimagined roles.
Read more: How AI is killing (and reinventing) middle management
7. Know When to Changeand When to Hold Steady
In a profoundly uncertain world, and a business environment in which the only constant is disruption, the most critical leadership skill of all might well be discernment: the wisdom of knowing what to preserve and what to transform.
Effective leaders distinguish between their organizations core identity (the what that they must not compromise) an their methods (the how that can be endlessly reimagined). In times of change, it is essential for leaders to be steadfast about the former while being completely flexible about the latter.
Read more: How to know when (and when not) to make a change
An Integrated Path
Not every organization will need to emphasize all seven priorities equally. A company with a strong and adaptable middle-management culture may focus elsewhere; one already grounded in regenerative principles can move quickly to portfolio building. The point is not to tackle everything at once but to recognize that these are the dimensions along which the AI transformation will play out, and to make deliberate choices about where to invest attention.
What leaders cannot afford is drift. Organizations that treat AI adoption as something that happens to themtool by tool, team by team, without strategic intentwill find themselves shaped by the technology rather than shaping it. The difference between leading and following in 2026 will come down to whether these choices are made consciously or by default.
The leaders who prepare their organizations for 2026 by tackling these priorities wont just survive the AI revolution. Theyll shape itbuilding organizations that are more resilient, more human, and more capable of creating lasting value in an age of unprecedented technological change.
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With President Trump back in the White House, this year has brought a barrage of executive orders and edicts that target workers. Trump reduced the minimum wage for federal contractors, made major cuts to the Occupational Safety and Health Administrationwhose express mission is to keep people safe in the workplaceand attempted to undermine collective bargaining rights for federal workers. He has also, of course, set his sights on dismantling diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs across both the federal workforce and corporate America.
Still, theres a glimmer of hope for workers: Many states have taken it upon themselves to enshrine policies like paid leave and pay transparency, with some of them now turning their attention to how the misuse of artificial intelligence in hiring could harm workers. Here are some of the laws and policies that will take effect in 2026many of which continue to push forward on important issues for workers despite what the federal government has in store.
Anti-DEI measures
Trump has made anti-DEI policies a focal point of his time in office, kicking off this year with a number of executive orders that forced federal agencies to terminate all DEI-related policies and programs and stripped away a requirement for federal contractors that had been a crucial element of diversifying the workforce. That means, going into 2026, all federal DEI programs have been eliminatedbut there are a number of state-level bills that seek to curtail how DEI is utilized in hiring and across public education.
In Ohio, for example, legislation that passed this year prohibits any consideration of DEI in hiring decisions at public colleges and universities. Similar laws in Kansas, Idaho, and Wyoming will curtail DEI programs for hiring across higher education.
Meanwhile, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commissionthe agency tasked with enforcing antidiscrimination laws in employmenthas made clear that corporate DEI programs will be under greater scrutiny going into 2026.
The use of AI in hiring
As companies have embedded AI into their hiring process, many HR teams have started relying on automated résumé screeners and other AI tools. In 2026, three laws will take effect at the state level to create some guardrails around how AI is being used for employment decisions, following in the footsteps of New York City and California, which have already adopted AI in hiring laws.
Colorado and Texas are introducing broader AI governance laws that also explicitly call for more oversight of how the technology is used in the hiring process to ensure it is not discriminatory. In Illinois, the law is an amendment of the states Human Rights Act and regulates how workers are impacted by the use of AI in all employment decisions. At the federal level, a bipartisan bill introduced in Congress last month wouldif passedforce employers to disclose when layoffs are caused by AI.
Minimum wage
The minimum wage continues to rise, year after year, as states have raised the wage floor in response to worker advocacy. As 2026 rolls around, 20 states will have enacted and started phasing in a $15 minimum wage, with hourly wages actually crossing $15 in a total of 11 states by the end of next year. Since 2012, a total of 15 states have adopted a $15 minimum wage, according to the National Employment Law Project, in no small part because of the Fight for $15 movement that originated among fast-food workers.
By the end of 2026, many workers will see even greater pay increases as the minimum wage is boosted to $17 across 53 cities and localities. A handful of states have also approved changes to the subminimum wage, which typically pays tipped workers a lower hourly rate. (There have been several proposals at the federal level to eliminate the subminimum wage altogether, but nothing has successfully passed.)
Paid leave
While the efforts to pass federal paid family leave have more or less come to a standstill, a handful of states have kept pushing to secure those benefits for their workers. In Delaware, Maine, and Minnesota, a paid leave program will take effect in 2026, joining 10 other states that have already introduced the benefit.
Meanwhile, states like Connecticut are making significant expansions to their paid sick leave program, now requiring companies with as few as 11 employees to provide leave. (By 2027, even employers with one worker will have to do the same.) In total, about 20 states now offer paid sick leave in some capacity, as these laws have picked up steam in recent years. A number of cities and localities also provide paid leave, even in states like Pennsylvania that dont have broader coverage.
Pay transparency
Pay transparency laws have grown in popularity over the last four years, in an effort to arm workers with more information as they go into salary negotiationsor before they apply for a job at all. These laws often require employers to disclose a salary range in all job postings, though some states have only mandated that employers verbally share salary information.
This year, Massachusetts and New Jersey adopted laws that require pay ranges in job listings, bringing the total number of states with these laws on the books to 14. At the local level, some cities in Ohio have started requiring salary disclosures, as is also the case in Washington, D.C. Salary transparency laws also often prohibit employers from asking about a candidates salary history during the interview process and using that to determine their compensation.
Lorrie Faith Cranors latest effort to educate people about privacy is a short, colorfully illustrated book written for an audience who probably cant read it yet.
Cranor, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University and director of the Pittsburgh schools CyLab Usable Privacy and Security Laboratory, wrote Privacy, Please! after publishing more than 200 research papers, spending a 20162017 stint as the Federal Trade Commissions chief technologist, and making a quilt and dress illustrated with commonly used weak passwords.
In a Zoom video call, Cranor says she got the idea for this self-published childrens book when planning for a privacy-outreach event at a local library and getting input from the librarians there revealed an unmet need for one. I asked them for their recommendations, and they didn’t know of any children’s books about privacy, she recounts. And you know, there really isn’t much out there.
Especially for a younger audience. The Eyemonger, a frequently recommended kids book by George Washington University Law School professor Daniel J. Solove published in 2020, is aimed at readers ages 6 to 9. Then I started thinking about, well, what would I want in a book for preschool kids about privacy? Cranor says.
[Illustration: Courtesy of Lorrie Faith Cranor]
The answer: 25 pages of her words and artwork by illustrator Alena Karabach, in which our nameless protagonist, often accompanied by a pet dog, turtle, and goldfish, explains basic concepts of privacy.
Sometimes I want to be alone. I dont want anyone to see me, hear me, or come too close. This is called privacy.
Sometimes I listen to music on my headphones so that only I can hear.
When my best friend comes over we play in my clubhouse. Its our private space!
Sometimes I want to create artwork without anyone watching.
Privacy can help us have more fun! Superheroes need privacy to put on their costumes.
My parents lock their phones so nobody can see their private things.
When I play games online I use a funny name and picture so strangers dont know who I really am.
Its nice to put my technology away and play outside where theres lots of privacy.
Cranor took inspiration for this from an earlier public-outreach project: Privacy Illustrated, a workshop she started in 2014 to invite people of many ages to draw depictions of what they thought the concept looked like. That, for instance, is where the turtle came from, she recalls. I had never thought about turtles this way until I saw people drawing pictures of turtles and saying turtles carry their privacy with them. The goldfish, meanwhile, is a finned metaphor for having no privacy at all. I told the illustrator, make the goldfish look as sad as you possibly can, Cranor says.
The first draft also included a dog giving himself some privacy by retreating into a doghouse. But the preschool teachers Cranor consulted pointed out that none of their city-kid students had doghouses and might not recognize a Peanuts reference anyway. Instead, the dog hides underneath a bed.
At no point do we see this childs entire face, a choice Cranor made early on.
I also wanted the main character to be a little ambiguous as to whether they’re a boy or a girl and what race they are, she saysthe idea being to give any child reading it a chance to see some part of themselves there.
Theres also little technology on display, aside from one page that shows the main character sitting before an iMac G4 that would now be at least 21 years old and so must be some sort of hand-me-down.
And any adult reader looking for explain-like-Im-5 advice about reading lengthy privacy policies wont find it in this slim volume. A lot of the more complicated lessons about online privacy just didn’t seem appropriate for this audience, Cranor says. But I didn’t want to not have digital privacy there at all, because, well, they’re already playing with their parents phones.
Plus, it wont be too long before the members of the books preschool audience will need some grounding in the basics of tech privacy. You know, next year they will be online, and so I wanted to plant the seeds for that,” Cranor says.
As for the parents, aunts and uncles, and other grownups reading the book aloud to children, Cranor says she hopes this work will encourage them to listen a little more. It’s okay to say you don’t want your picture taken, and this is a struggle for parents because parents love to take their kids’ pictures, she says.
The books website includes a discussion guide for parents as well as a door-hanger exercise for kids that invites them to make a version of a hotels door tag (Privacy, Please! or Lets Play!) for their rooms from a cut-up cereal box.
Cranor expects a large chunk of the sales of this $14.99 bookwhich she chose to self-publish after realizing that would take vastly less time than finding an agent to sell a traditional publisher on the ideawill involve other privacy professionals. They all want to buy it for the children in their lives,” she explains.
But another potential target market comes to mind: founders of large tech companies with a demonstrated record of paying inadequate attention to privacy and missing peoples tastes in technologin particular founders with young children of their on.
By which I mean, Mark Zuckerberg. Has Cranor sent him a copy of the book? I have not, she says. I mean, its probably worth trying.
