Recently, a report by technology and consulting firm Capgemini - ‘TechnoVision Top 5 Tech Trends to Watch in 2026’, said artificial intelligence would be the central theme in the coming year. Particularly pointing at 2026 being the year of truth for AI, the report says while the current investments in technology outstrips the demand, 2026 will see proof-of-concept to proof-of-impact, and AI driven measurable outcomes, and at the same time, laying the foundations for larger-scale transformation.

Also, in a recent survey of CIO survey by Recognize, a technology investment firm found 85% of respondents expect their IT budgets to increase in 2026, and 57% of respondents’ organisations said that they already have major AI projects in production. With all indicators leading to AI being the big tech theme, with in the AI umbrella, industry experts and companies see a few aspects set to accelerate in 2026.  

Accelerated AI adoption  

Of the large IT services and consulting companies in India, TCS and HCL Tech have started to call out revenues from its advanced AI offering. These two firms put together have projected an annual recurring rate (ARR) of revenue from technology to be just a tad short of $2 billion. Given that demonstration of value, Sindhu Gangadharan, Chairperson, Nasscom sees India’s technology sector entering a phase in 2026 where scale, accountability, and outcomes matter more than momentum. 

“AI adoption is becoming sharper and more grounded in real use cases. Enterprises are asking clearer questions aroundproductivity, resilience, and trust. They expect technology to integrate seamlessly into core processes, not sit at the edges as experimentation. This shift places responsibility on the industry to design solutions that are secure, explainable, and aligned with long-term value creation,” she said.  

More recently, during the company’s Q1FY26 earnings call, the world’s largest IT services and consulting company Accenture, saw its advanced AI booking reach $2.2 billion from $1.2 billion in new bookings a year ago, and its advanced AI bringing in approximately $1.1 billion in revenue. The company which started providing AI revenue metrics in Q3 FY23 said that it no longer sees the need to spill out the number separately because it has become all pervasive. 

According to Julie Sweet, Chair and Chief Executive Officer, Accenture, the demand for artificial intelligence solutions is both real and rapidly maturing. “We're shifting to more scaled end-to-end solutions that integrate multiple forms of AI and it has become less meaningful to isolate the data specifically for advanced AI as it does not reflect how the demand is evolving on the ground, the full scope of our AI work or the value we are creating,” she said in the company’s earnings call.  

Agentic and domain native AI  

Recently during Microsoft’s AI Tour in India, Satya Nadella Chairman and CEO announced the licensing of two lakh Co-pilot licenses between four IT services and consulting companies, namely Cognizant, Infosys, TCS, and Wipro where AI is being adopted from business operations to employee experiences to integration in daily workflow. In fact, most firms now have seen Agentic AI deployment in functions like HR, finance, and also within their software development teams.  

Sandhya Arun, Chief Technology Officer, Wipro Limited says that enterprises are moving from isolated agentic AI experiments to pragmatic, enterprise-wide strategies focused on measurable business outcomes. “By 2026, networks of collaborating AI agents will manage complex workflows across IT, HR, finance, marketing, sales, legal, procurement, operations, supply chains, customer engagement, and commerce. As AI gains autonomy, the human role evolves toward strategic direction, governance, and human-centric steering,” she says. 

Not just any agents but the shift will also be towards models will be trained on industry-specific datasets and built with contextual intelligence.” Smaller, focused models will deliver deeper expertise and better accuracy in specific areas, while also being more cost-effective and less resource intensive” adds Sandhya.    

Customer centric AI approach  

More than any technology in the past, the adoption of AI in enterprises has seen IT companies take a more collaborative approach for implementation. In 2026, with a rapidly evolving technology like Artificial intelligence, firms will see more collaborations with customers, right from its design stage tailoring it to the enterprise context.   

In fact, recently at the investors day, India’s largest IT service and consulting company alluded to the criticality of customer centricity in tech development in the age of AI.  K Krithivasan - MD & CEO, TCS said that helping customers make technology choices in the context of their business strategy is critical. Explaining the company’s AI strategy, he said because of shortened utility than before, which means that tech what one buys today or builds today, may not be fit for purpose in 2-5 years. “The kind of projects we are doing, based on many years of our deep customer experiences- we are also moving up the value chain. In the past, the kind of project that we did would be in building the system. Somebody designs, what they need us to do; (was to) we go and help them in implementing. But this technology shift and the deep customer connect, and context we have, is helping us move up the value chain now,” he said.  

With a clear shift away from generic intelligence toward AI that understands the nuances of an enterprise (its data, processes, policies, and customer behaviors) Sindhu Gangadharan who heads SAP Labs India and the Customer Innovation Services, SAP; sees customer-specific AI become a durable differentiator. “At Customer Innovation Services, we work closely with organizations to embed intelligence directly into their customer-facing processes. Whether it’s dispute resolution, returns management, service exceptions, or claims handling, value emerges when AI is trained on enterprise context and evolves alongside business rules and customer expectations. This approach allows companies to scale complexity while retaining control, governance, and accountability,” she says.  

 AI talent readiness  

In a Human + AI scenario, IT firms have already embarked on training and recruiting talent that will fit into the AI-led technology shift. 

Accenture, which had set out a goal of reaching 80,000 AI and data practitioners by the end of fiscal year 2026, recently said it's already close to achieving it. TCS now says all employees, 580,000 people are AI-aware, and around 180,000 have higher-order AI skills up from 80,000 at the end of last year. Infosys on the other hand has nearly 90% of its employees who are AI aware who can collaborate with AI tools in their daily work, while its 10% of top technology talent is driving highly innovative AI projects. HCL is also hugely incentivizing pay for AI talent.  

The rush for AI talent is also likely to continue in 2026. Quess Corp sees nearly 7-9% demand uptick in IT services hiring, and the demand concentrated around those with skills in cloud, cyber, data engineering and ai-enablement roles rather than broad pyramid hiring. Kapil Joshi, CEO of IT Staffing, Quess Corp, says their latest work force report finding suggest that momentum in IT hiring through 2026 will be led by specialised digital roles and the demand is expected to remain concentrated around AI, cloud, cybersecurity and data-led roles, with BFSI, SaaS, telecom and manufacturing among the key hiring sectors.