Sutskever’s Fate, OpenAI’s Next Deal, A Hit Robot—and 13 Other Predictions for 2026

No one in Silicon Valley gets wealthy or powerful by dwelling on the past. Rather, the brightest minds within tech often outshine the competition by obsessing about the future.

We like to get in on the game too. In keeping with annual tradition, we’re publishing below our best educated guesses on what’ll happen in 2026: what Microsoft buys, what Amazon discards, what robot goes mainstream, and 12 other pieces of prognostication. (Over the last few days, we also thought aloud about Apple’s AI woes, Oracle’s debt strategy and xAI’s fate.) These predictions come from reasoned analysis of the companies and people in this world—and the studious reporting we do the other 364 days of the year, when we’re not moonlighting as clairvoyants.