2026 Predictions: Agentic Commerce & Retailer Response

Agentic commerce gets real: Transaction volumes from AI agents move from a trickle to “meaningful,” as consumers progress from researching via AI to completing purchases on platforms like ChatGPT connected to Shopify, Etsy, and large retailers.

Retailers limit scraping: Many top U.S. retailers will restrict broad, agentic scraping of their sites and instead offer structured feeds to AI platforms, trying to regain leverage and shape how their products are surfaced.

2026 Predictions: Payments, Stablecoins, and B2B Automation

Agentic payments start in B2B: The first real impact of agentic payments will be in B2B flows—automating high-friction workflows, recurring payments, and reconciliation rather than consumer card swipes.

Stablecoins become native to fintech & treasury stacks: Stablecoin-based payments get deeply integrated into fintech and treasury applications, moving from “manual” usage to embedded flows as demand becomes more institutional and mainstream.

Big banks join the stablecoin party: A key open question—and focus of the prediction—is how much large banks and traditional institutions begin to integrate stablecoins for their commercial and corporate clients.

2026 Predictions: Banking, Wealth & Tokenized Assets

Tokenized securities go “hot”: Expect a wave of tokenized issuance across public equities, ETFs, private credit, and alternatives, plus a lot of startup funding chasing tokenization infrastructure.

Alternatives become more accessible: Access to alternatives—pre-IPO equity, private credit, real estate, private funds—will expand, driven in part by concerns over AI-concentrated public markets and the need for diversification, even for smaller accredited investors.

2026 Predictions: AI “Hires” Inside Banks & Insurers

Banks “hire” AI agents: Smaller financial institutions will effectively put AI agents on payroll, using them to augment underwriting, regulatory, and compliance workflows. Crucially, the budgets will often come from headcount/payroll rather than traditional IT spend.

AI catalyzes core modernization in insurance: Carriers will use specialized AI vendors to re-platform historically untouchable core functions (underwriting, policy servicing, claims intake). The team expects a meaningful share of top carriers to engage in real replatforming with AI-native vendors.

Specialized over generic: The winning AI platforms will be highly specialized to banking and insurance workflows—not generic AI or horizontal SaaS—leading to very “sticky” agent relationships.

2026 Predictions: Next-Gen ERP & Capital Markets

Next-gen ERPs threaten NetSuite: For startups, new ERP players will become the default over legacy options. Faster implementations, better AI tooling, and higher success rates will make “Have you evaluated any of the next-gen ERPs?” a standard board question.

Early enterprise conversions: Some non-startup enterprises will begin switching from legacy ERPs, as ERP is often the last truly legacy piece in otherwise modern stacks.

IPOs and exits reopen: The partnership expects IPO and M&A markets to remain open and to accelerate—potentially surpassing the pre-pandemic five-year IPO high (~$50B). A large backlog of IPO candidates and pent-up M&A demand sets the stage for a busy 2026.