Coming soon: ‘super phones’, smoother AI, car-first tech

Time and tech wait for no one and, in 2026, what has been a somewhat relentless pace looks set to intensify.

- Vishal Mathur

Expect the hype around artificial intelligence (AI) to shift towards pragmatism. We are now at the point in the arc where outlandish claims must be backed by proof of concept.

In other news, automakers may move towards breaking their reliance on tech companies by building capabilities of their own. The Ford-backed company Rivian represents something of an early move in this direction.

This will also be a year of AI and its allied shifts becoming more interwoven with our lives. Can governments and laws, safety and regulation, keep pace?

The next generation of AI models from Google, OpenAI and Anthropic will be released this year. Nvidia, AMD and others are working on their next line of chips. While these allied companies spend billions in circular investments to prop each other up, power and water demands from data centres worldwide will rise. Meanwhile, more businesses will reassign certain functionalities to the algorithms.