Embedded systems expert Jacob Beningo explores five major industry trends for 2026, focusing on how AI-assisted development, security requirements, and platform-based engineering are reshaping embedded software development. This comprehensive analysis covers emerging technologies and methodologies that microcontroller-based system developers need to understand to stay competitive in the evolving embedded systems landscape.

Key Takeaways:

• Use AI to create custom development tools rather than just copying code, potentially saving months of development time annually
• Security is no longer optional due to regulations like CRA - threat modeling and secure boot processes are now requirements
• Platform-based engineering is driving adoption of modern tools like CMake, VS Code, and Zephyr RTOS across silicon vendors
• C++ continues gradual adoption in embedded systems, growing from 3% to 30% market share over 20 years while C remains dominant
• Functional simulation techniques can reduce debugging time by 50%, saving significant development resources when combined with AI tools
• Edge AI and tiny ML are poised for resurgence as microcontrollers gain more compute power and specialized processing units
• DevOps adoption varies widely, with basic Git and compilation pipelines being minimum requirements for modern development
• West manifest tools are becoming important for managing complex multi-repository platform projects
• AI should enhance expertise rather than replace fundamental embedded systems knowledge and skills
• Copy-paste culture threatens to erode deep embedded systems expertise needed for solving complex hardware-software integration issues