2026 Predictions
There's absolutely no way I can predict what will happen in 2026. All of these are a coin toss. No one can produce accurate probabilities of these events. I'm writing about some predictions I have an interest in, but I am by no means an expert. Nevertheless, it's fun so here are my 2026 predictions:
AI (sparkle emoji)
2025 was an eventful year for AI (to be precise, the use of LLMs in applications called AI. I don't believe AI is a useful term outside of marketing purposes.) I expect 2026 to be similar. It's fairly predictable that models will get better. There's also discussion of an AI bubble bursting. I don't know how to define a bubble, and it might take years before we can point to the time it burst. What I do know is that we're currently in a data center construction boom. These data centers will take years to come online, and power generation is a larger bottleneck than compute. Knowing that the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent, I think we won't see any major shifts in 2026 regarding AI spending and bubbles. As long as the money is flowing AI will boom, demand be damned.
An 8B parameter model scores at least 0.8 on MMLU-Pro by December 31.
Basically, I'm predicting there will be open source models that can run locally in 2026 that are as good as cloud models from 2025. Let's use this benchmark. Currently GPT-5(high) scores 0.871. InternLM3 (open source) at 8B parameters scores 0.576. LLaMA 3.1 (2024) Instruct 8B basically doubled the score of LLaMA 2 7B (2023) in about a year. LLaMA-4 Scout (2025) is showing the same performance as LLaMA3.1-Instruct with 75% fewer parameters. The trend is towards smaller models with better benchmark performance. For this prediction, I will only consider the total number of model parameters (not "active" parameters). An optional side prediction: the model that achieves a score of 0.8 on MMLU-Pro with 8B parameters will come from China.
Usage of ChatGPT and Gemini decline after launch of new Siri
The current leaders in AI chat apps are OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Gemini. Apple is famously "behind" in the AI race. But Apple has a history of winning, even when it's late to the game. Lagging in AI hasn't hurt Apple's stock price in the slightest (up 8.93% in 2025.) It's long been expected that Apple will release their revamped Siri in 2026, and it's been reported that the new Siri will be powered by Google's Gemini. So no matter how this plays out, Google wins. Nevertheless I predict Apple's offering will be good enough that most iPhone users won't need a dedicated ChatGPT or Gemini app. In other words, AI chatbots will be Sherlocked. Official numbers may be hard to find, so to verify this result I'll rely on third-party reporting and some speculation. Gemini had 21M downloads last month according to Sensor Tower. And ChatGPT had 65M. A decline in these numbers doesn't necessarily mean Apple is gaining market share, but we might be able to speculate based on reporting about Apple's new Siri features.
New standards for agent tooling
With the formation of the new Agentic AI Foundation, I anticipate many more standards being announced in 2026. The most obvious one I can think of is a standard for AI tool calling. Look at this leaked system prompt for ChatGPT 5 or this Gemini CLI prompt. They have to describe every tool available to the agent and how to use it. Both have different syntax. Presumably some non-LLM deterministic code understands how to interpret and run the commands in the output This prediction passes if a standard is drafted that includes syntax for AI agent tool calling, or an approach emerges that replaces the need for it.
Politics
I don't like to write or talk about politics much, because such discussions are rarely fruitful. Nevertheless, we live in a world where almost everything is politicized so you can't avoid it. These are my predictions.
Many of Trump's tariffs are ruled unconstitutional
The Supreme Court heard arguments in Learning Resources v. Trump in November. We're still waiting on a ruling. The case hinges on whether the International Emergency Economic Powers Act authorizes tariffs under Trump's emergency declarations. My prediction is that the Supreme Court will rule against Trump. This would unravel many (but not all) of the imposed tariffs.
Democrats win in the House midterms
Every once in a while I like to peak at Nate Silver's Trump Approval Dashboard. The accumulation of polls presents an interesting picture over time. The exact numbers aren't meaningful, but the trends seem pretty clear to me: Trump is losing popularity. The political pendulum swings—if people don't feel like the current party is improving their life, then they'll vote for the other one. There's precedent for this too. Trump lost the house in 2018 with record voter turnout. This time, the Republicans are trying new strategies like redistricting in Texas, but I think these efforts won't matter. Hispanic voters were critical to Trump's election, but now they've soured on him.
Billionaires get richer
Billionaires earned a collective $2.2 trillion in 2025. That's an absurd amount of money, but I don't see it stopping. I predict they'll earn a collective $3 trillion in 2026.
Other
Here are a few more predictions in other dimensions of life.
Avatar: Fire and Ash reaches top 10 highest grossing films of all time
James Cameron will do it again. Avatar 1 is the highest grossing film of all time. Avatar 2 is the 3rd highest grossing film of all time, and Titanic is the 4th highest grossing film of all time. Betting against James Cameron just seems silly. As of writing, Avatar 3 has about $800 million in box office revenue. It just needs to double that to get into the top 10. I don't really know much about the economics of movies, but maybe that's possible. I'll award partial credit if it makes top 50 (~$1 billion.)
Bitcoin drops to $50,000
After hitting a peak around $125,000 BTC is now down to $87,000. The last time it was $50k was in 2024. There are no fundamentals driving the price of Bitcoin. People either take advantage of the dip to pump it up again, or it continues to sink. That's right, you heard it here first: bitcoin will either go up or down! But my bet is down. Bonus prediction: there will be no Walmart or Amazon stablecoin in 2026 (who would use this?)
5% of Steam users will be on Linux
Linux usage grew from 2% to 3% in 2025. Linux users currently make up 3.2% since November. With the recently announced Steam Machine and additional hardware, switching to Linux will probably be even more appealing. Microsoft has done gamers no favors. Valve's investment in Linux protects them from dependence on Microsoft. Windows is getting worse. I don't put much stake in public outcry—because rants on Reddit rarely reflect on a company's top line metrics—but I think it fits into a larger narrative around the decline of Windows and Xbox. Microsoft has been losing in the gaming sphere for some time. The PlayStation 5 way outperformed the Xbox Series X/S. Now they're putting Halo on PlayStation, presumably because they can't make money on their own consoles anymore. They severely botched their acquisition of Activision Blizzard, which looked like an attempt to rescue their gaming division, but it backfired. They fired most of the Activision employees already and the future of some franchises seems uncertain. Microsoft lost their lead in consoles, and now they're losing in PC gaming. Even Apple is getting AAA studios to port their games. Basically—Windows is giving gamers every reason to abandon ship and Valve is over here offering a life raft.