It’s been three years since OpenAI released ChatGPT and kicked off a surge in innovation and attention on AI. Since then, optimists have regularly claimed that AI will become a critical part of the enterprise software industry, and so enterprise AI startups mushroomed on the back of immense amounts of investment.
But enterprises are still struggling to see the benefit of adopting these new AI tools. An MIT survey in August found that 95% of enterprises weren’t getting a meaningful return on their investments in AI.
So when will businesses start seeing real benefits from using and integrating AI? TechCrunch surveyed 24 enterprise-focused VCs, and they overwhelmingly think 2026 will be the year when enterprises start to meaningfully adopt AI, see value from it, and increase their budgets for the tech.
Enterprise VCs have been saying that for three years now. Will 2026 actually be different?
Let’s hear what they have to say:
What enterprise-related trends do you expect to take off in 2026?
Kirby Winfield, founding general partner, Ascend: Enterprises are realizing that LLMs are not a silver bullet for most problems. Just because Starbucks can use Claude to write their own CRM software doesn’t mean they should. We’ll focus on custom models, fine tuning, evals, observability, orchestration, and data sovereignty.
Molly Alter, partner, Northzone: A subset of enterprise AI companies will shift from product businesses to AI consulting. These companies may start with a specific product, such as AI customer support or AI coding agents. But once they have enough customer workflows running off their platform, they can replicate the forward-deployed engineer model with their own team to build additional use cases for customers. In other words, many specialized AI product companies will become generalist AI implementers.
Techcrunch event Join the Disrupt 2026 Waitlist Add yourself to the Disrupt 2026 waitlist to be first in line when Early Bird tickets drop. Past Disrupts have brought Google Cloud, Netflix, Microsoft, Box, Phia, a16z, ElevenLabs, Wayve, Hugging Face, Elad Gil, and Vinod Khosla to the stages — part of 250+ industry leaders driving 200+ sessions built to fuel your growth and sharpen your edge. Plus, meet the hundreds of startups innovating across every sector. Join the Disrupt 2026 Waitlist Add yourself to the Disrupt 2026 waitlist to be first in line when Early Bird tickets drop. Past Disrupts have brought Google Cloud, Netflix, Microsoft, Box, Phia, a16z, ElevenLabs, Wayve, Hugging Face, Elad Gil, and Vinod Khosla to the stages — part of 250+ industry leaders driving 200+ sessions built to fuel your growth and sharpen your edge. Plus, meet the hundreds of startups innovating across every sector. San Francisco | WAITLIST NOW
Marcie Vu, partner, Greycroft: We’re very excited about the opportunity in voice AI. Voice is a far more natural, efficient, and expressive way for people to communicate with each other and with machines. We’ve spent decades typing on computers and staring at screens, but speech is how we engage in the real world. I am eager to see how builders reimagine products, experiences, and interfaces with voice as the primary mode of interaction with intelligence.
... continue reading