The origins of the phrase “May you live in interesting times” may be unclear, but today’s technology leaders understand its meaning all too well.
On one hand, 2025 saw artificial intelligence (AI) continue to revolutionize work as we know it, and leaders across industries ramped up their search for ways to reap its benefits. On the other hand, AI is now powering cyber attacks that few organizations are equipped to deal with, and more are certainly on the way. All of this has happened against a backdrop of economic instability that has led organizations to tighten their belts and ask tech functions to do more with less.
After all that happened in 2025, what will 2026 hold for tech leaders? Leveraging data from our 2025 Technology Leadership Pulse Survey and real-world insights from subject matter experts, we learned that today’s tech leaders are determined to keep building, eager to get the most out of AI, cautious about tomorrow’s threats, and looking for innovative ways to do it all with fewer resources and smaller teams.
2025 Trend: Tech Budgets Cool Amid Economic Volatility
Just a few short years ago, the idea that technology budgets might stagnate — or even contract — seemed unthinkable. But our survey found that, for many, that unthinkable future is edging closer.
Seventy percent of respondents to our Technology Leadership Pulse Survey said their budgets were growing in 2025, compared to 73% who said the same in 2024. Meanwhile, just under 9% of this year’s respondents said budgets were shrinking, down from 15% the previous year.
But in one of the sharpest year-over-year changes between our 2024 and 2025 surveys, 58% said they expect budgets to increase moderately in 2025, compared to just 36% last year. Just 11% said they expect their budgets to increase significantly, down from 37% in 2024.
“Any business that relies on a supply chain — which is virtually all of them — has been in wait-and-see mode since the end of 2024,” said Kolby Kappes, AI and data services practice leader at Eliassen Group. “The shifting regulatory landscape and ongoing international trade changes have meant that many organizations haven’t been as willing to increase tech budgets, or at least not to the same degree, as they were in previous years.”
At the same time, these already-limited budgets are being limited even further by price hikes on everything from software to hardware to services and more. Early in 2025, Gartner reported that “[a]ll major categories are reflecting higher-than-expected prices,” meaning that tech leaders have likely had to tighten their belts even more than they may have anticipated.
But after a year of doing more with less, tech leaders will undoubtedly ask for more budget in 2026. To make the case effectively, one expert stressed that data, above all else, will be key.
“If budgets remain as tight as they’ve been throughout 2025, then one thing you’ll see more of in 2026 is a focus on extracting and analyzing performance data,” said Bob Fischer, senior director, product and training at Eliassen Group.
“Organizations are no longer content to let their tech teams launch initiatives and hope they work,” Fischer added. “With fewer resources to work with, these organizations are increasingly focused on demonstrating outcomes. Leaders that can come to the table with real-world data that shows how much bang organizations got for their tech-budget buck will have a much better chance of seeing their budgets grow in 2026.”
What to Expect in 2026: Budget Constraints Remain the Norm
The economic volatility and turbulent global markets that characterized 2025 may stabilize in 2026. But unless that happens soon, expect budgets to remain relatively static throughout 2026. That doesn’t mean budgets will shrink — but they aren’t likely to grow at the rate they once did.
As a result, tech leaders will need to double down on data to prove the success of their initiatives, find every possible efficiency to maximize their stretched budgets, and look to partners that can help them streamline operations, speed up delivery cycles, and capitalize on market changes faster than ever before.
2025 Trend: AI Remained a Solution in Search of a Problem
When asked what technologies they were investing in throughout 2025, it’s probably no surprise that AI led the list for our respondents. More than a fifth — almost 22% — of decision-makers said they were investing in AI and machine learning, among other technologies, while 20% said cybersecurity. Cloud computing was a close third at 19%.
Respondents also made it clear that implementing AI wasn’t just a priority among technology investments — it was also an organizational imperative. When asked what their organizations were focused on in 2025, AI ranked higher than increasing efficiency, improving the customer experience, and even reducing costs.
“The attitude among technology leaders today is that AI will soon move the needle on all those goals,” said John Brienen, senior vice president of solution sales at Eliassen Group. “Many see a near future in which AI is a kind of force multiplier, capable of delivering efficiencies that reduce costs and free up human workers to focus on more important, value-adding tasks.”
Despite this pervasive optimism — and the real wins some companies had with AI in 2025 — Kappes suggested that organizations may still want to proceed with caution in 2026.
“Everyone knows AI will eventually have use cases throughout the enterprise,” he noted. “What no one seems to know is what those will be and how they’ll be implemented. As a result, there have been a lot of false starts. That’s one of the reasons so many AI implementations fail before they reach the production stage. It’s also the reason why we advise leaders to focus on getting one AI implementation right before trying to go all-in on AI across the board.”
What to Expect in 2026: As AI Continues to Mature, Use Cases Become Clear
AI promises to revolutionize everything from code to cybersecurity and beyond, and it may soon deliver on that promise and more. When it does, early adopters will likely achieve substantial gains in efficiency and reductions in cost, while organizations that chose the “wait-and-see” approach will scramble to catch up.
In short, even if AI doesn’t have a clear use within most organizations today, it likely will very soon. To ensure that they’re ready to meet the moment, tech leaders should consider exploring the capabilities of available AI solutions and evaluating the quality of their data as soon as possible. As the old saying goes: “There’s no substitute for proper preparation.”
2025 Trend: New Threats Kept Cybersecurity at the Forefront
Security issues topped the list of concerns expressed by all respondents in our 2025 Technology Leadership Pulse Survey. When asked where they were spending their cybersecurity budgets in 2025, respondents were almost evenly split between available solutions. In fact, when offered the ability to select among four choices — identity and access management (IAM) solutions, managed security services, endpoint detection and response (EDR) solutions, and threat intelligence platforms — almost all respondents said they planned to invest in each.
This approach, Kappes noted, wasn’t a surprise. But it might also not protect their organizations from what’s coming next.
“Cybersecurity functions are always waiting for the next big threat to appear, so they generally spread their budget across the tools or technologies they think can most effectively protect the organization,” Kappes said. “Today, they’re still waiting for that threat to appear, but most expect it to come in the form of AI, or at least bad actors using AI,” Kappes said.
These AI-based vulnerabilities could be as simple as an employee using an AI that has access to unsecured data, or they could be relatively new vectors, like adversarial AIs and even deepfakes used in sophisticated phishing attacks. In fact, GenAI has already played a key role in major cyberattack campaigns, and it’s easy to see why: A report from 2024 found that 60% of people fell for AI-generated phishing attacks, while another found that just .1% of those surveyed were able to distinguish between deepfakes and “real” content.
“AI represents a huge concern in the cybersecurity field for obvious reasons, but it also represents an unprecedented opportunity,” Kappes said. “It’s already being leveraged by bad actors, and that’s only going to intensify. But it can be — or soon will be — leveraged to detect and even deter threats faster than ever.”
What to Expect in 2026: AI Threats Come into Focus as Security Leaders Race to Keep Pace
With AI-powered attacks already taking place and more certainly on the way, cybersecurity functions can’t expect to rely on the same solutions — or the same skills — to combat tomorrow’s threats. What they can do, however, is to take a cue from the bad guys and put AI to work for them.
To counter a rapidly expanding threat landscape with static budgets, security leaders can look to a growing number of vendor solutions that leverage AI, as well as using AI to automate their threat detection and increase response speed.
Takeaways for Tech Leaders
From shrinking budgets to emerging threats, from the promise of AI to economic unpredictability, the tech landscape of 2025 was more challenging than ever. At the same time, leaders worked to balance demand for continued innovation, improved security, and greater productivity with the constraints of smaller budgets and fewer resources.
In 2026, these same factors will likely continue to dominate the technology landscape. To thrive — rather than just survive — tech leaders will need to:
- Leverage AI when and where they can to empower teams and improve cybersecurity outcomes
- Bring trusted, strategic partners to the table in order to find efficiencies, increase agility and adaptability, reduce risk, and maximize every available budget dollar
- Demonstrate wins with data in order to showcase ROI
To get more insights like these on the state of technology functions, plus AI, cybersecurity, technology talent, and more, visit our resources page today.
