Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2026. Read them in this 18th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.
By Marty Puranik, Founder and CEO, Atlantic.Net
In 2025, the technology market showed itself to be different from what we’ve seen before. That’s because the industry – with its many moving parts and ever-growing artificial intelligence (AI) presence – is now like the Wild West. Uncertainty is reality. The end of 2025 left the market in insatiable demand, but who is paying for it? And with more risk than the market even knew it had, along with the potential for an unprecedented downcycle, many industry players are asking themselves how they can avoid the pitfalls that could wipe them out altogether.
These factors, and more, set the stage for 2026. At Atlantic.Net, we’re laser-focused on navigating this complex time with clarity. Our six predictions for 2026 include having a watchful eye on AI, cybersecurity, and the evolving infrastructure landscape.
Higher Stakes Require Revised Strategies
It’s not enough to keep fighting the last threat. Cybersecurity is a moving, rapidly evolving target where threat actors continually adapt, and technology providers must do the same. In particular, three areas of strategic focus will be critical in 2026:
- Meeting the threat: Providers that successfully combat shifting threats will engage in an ongoing cycle that starts with the basics: defining what must be protected. Essential follow-up includes regular reviews, measurable metrics, robust backup checks, and third-party audits, ultimately repeating that process continuously.
- Protecting data centers: Data centers are more critical than ever, and they could become targets – especially if AI is perceived as replacing jobs. Modern facilities deploy multilayer defenses, but data centers hosting AI workloads must be treated similarly to power plants or telco hubs. Successful attacks against AI-workload sites could mean widespread economic disruption, driving new standards that separate AI-critical from general-purpose or lower-risk sites.
- Developing a segmented, multicloud strategy: Similarly, organizations will intentionally segment cloud workloads based on risk. Mission-critical operations will require new redundancy measures, influencing global compliance and data sovereignty strategies. Every cloud setup should have built-in redundancy, as should failover sites with load-balancing set up for off-site mitigation with the same and another diverse provider, especially for mission-critical applications. Numerous cloud providers offer this type of resiliency and redundancy with a multiple cloud strategy.
�Compliant by Design’ Healthcare AI
Healthcare AI must prove itself not just in smart models but also in strict compliance. The challenge isn’t in the model itself, but in ensuring the entire data pipeline is compliant. To enable new AI-driven diagnostics and patient care without risking sensitive data, and to meet the requirements of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act in the U.S. and global privacy laws, institutions must architect cloud and AI infrastructure to embed privacy and security from the start.
Agentic AI Network Expansion
Networks of AIs collaborating and reasoning to solve complex problems within and across industries will expand rapidly. It involves a significant change in traffic patterns, throughput requirements, and what’s considered valuable. The current cloud is built for low latency, but agentic AI demands throughput, not latency. For example, an AI in an ambulance coordinating with an emergency room’s network requires secure, privacy-centric data enclaves that are compliant by design.
GPU Market Fragmentation
The global AI boom has spotlighted a critical bottleneck: GPUs. A single chipmaker currently supplies the bulk of the market, making it one of the most valuable companies in the world. However, such demand is unsustainable. We predict a major diversification in chosen hardware platforms in 2026, and we’ll see it in OpenAI’s insatiable demand for chips. AMD chips are highly capable, especially at inference, but they lack another company’s traction and validation. AMD will increase its stake significantly, while OpenAI will retain optionality by not being singularly reliant on another company.
Threats From AI-Driven Misinformation Dramatically Increase
AI has the power to fabricate and spread disinformation, which will undoubtedly intensify. This is especially true on social media, where it could have a destabilizing effect on society. In 2026, the tech world will work to maintain public trust and new government policies and safeguards will be implemented, such as digital watermarking and provenance standards contained in the technical specifications defined by the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity, or C2PA.
Specialization of AI Models
General-purpose AI models will give way to more specialized models that work in a more focused, efficient way. Trends like DeepSeek, which break problems into specialties, will become more widespread, with modular frameworks becoming standard for large-scale deployments.
In today’s technology marketplace, the only certainty may be uncertainty. Yet the insights shared here can help tech leaders find balance and a road map for navigating the competing pressures to continually innovate while also providing security, resiliency, and adaptability.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Marty Puranik is the founder and CEO of Atlantic.Net, a global cloud infrastructure provider specializing in security and compliance. Under Marty’s leadership since 1994, the company serves customers in over 100 countries, a diverse range of industries with solutions including HIPAA-compliant hosting and PCI-compliant hosting, backed by bare metal servers, dedicated hosting, GPU hosting, colocation, and its award-winning Cloud Platform. Operating from eight strategically located data center regions across the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Asia, Atlantic.Net powers mission-critical workloads for organizations worldwide.
