2026 is shaping up as a decisive year for AI

What is typically holding up those organisations which are not early AI adopters?

Most of the surveys in the market that look to understand the inhibitors to greater and more impactful AI adoption typically point to the areas of data management, the need to prove the business case, cyber-related concerns and upskilling of staff.

While each of these are valid concerns, the greatest inhibitor in our experience is the organisational mindset around the use of AI.

In PwC’s experience, right now, people and mindsets are often holding back the wider adoption of AI. And that’s exactly where the opportunity lies. 

Some of the real challenges are those rooted in people and organisational change, including the ability to connect AI agents across applications and workflows (16 per cent) and organisational change keeping pace with AI advancements (13 per cent).

Irish businesses must prioritise workforce engagement, upskilling and change management to overcome these barriers.

What trends are you seeing in generative AI and agentic AI and how are they being used to deliver increased efficiency and enhanced competitiveness for businesses?

For clarity, generative AI refers to a class of artificial intelligence models and algorithms designed to create new content, data, or solutions that resemble humangenerated outputs.

And agentic AI refers to artificial intelligence systems that are designed to autonomously pursue goals, make decisions, and execute multi-step tasks — often with minimal human supervision. PwC’s 2026 Global CEO survey found that companies applying AI widely across products, services and customer experiences benefit most.

The survey confirmed that AI is now essential and the key question is how companies adopt it and how their people drive it.

The PwC AI agents survey points to increased productivity (53 per cent), however, very few confirmed the ability to drive employee adoption.

2026 will see the following trends in the use of AI:

• There will be a pivot away from looking to solve simple function-specific use cases to looking to use the power of agentic AI to address end-to-end cross-functional business processes.
• The focus will move beyond using AI in the areas of collaboration and personal productivity and into the realm of enterprise application and core business processes.
• We will increasingly see an ‘AI first’ mindset in the design of processes and supporting operating models.

What is next for AI in business?

2026 is shaping up as a decisive year for AI, with agentic AI powering the transformation.

In 2026 we expect agentic AI to play an increasingly important role in business, taking autonomous decisions, following focused investments.

Importantly, having appropriate guardrails in place, including governance over AI, to ensure AI can be transformative in a controlled, safe and trustworthy way is critical.

A small group of companies are already turning AI into measurable financial returns.

According to PwC Ireland’s recent AI agents survey, Irish organisations are accelerating their investment in AI agents, with 70 per cent planning to increase their AI-related budget due to interest in agentic AI in the year ahead.

This signals the growing momentum among Irish organisations to scale their AI capabilities.

Senior leadership must pick the spots for focused AI investments where pay-offs can be big.

Linking business goals to AI capabilities can achieve high return on investment opportunities.

AI agents can go beyond analysis to automate parts of complex, high-value workflows, taking autonomous decisions.

Especially ripe areas for agents include demand sensing and forecasting, hyperpersonalisation, product design and functions like finance, HR, IT, tax and internal audit.

These are the focused big bets where real value can be achieved.

This article was first published on www.businessplus.ie