Welcome to our 2026 Term Sheet Crystal Ball! This week, I’ll be publishing all your 2026 predictions, from the precise to the wacky, from an open call to all Term Sheet readers that I put out in December. We got some great answers from unicorn founders, key investors, and needle-moving executives.
Our first topic is one you know, love, and perhaps fear: AI. For the last few years, every year has been declared the year of AI. But 2025 was especially undeniable: The discourse around AI truly moved from boardrooms to kitchen tables. And we got comfortable, more or less, saying that there is an AI bubble.
The question, of course, is what happens now. How big is that bubble? What areas of AI are actually bubbly? And which companies have staying power, when all is said and done? Here’s what Term Sheet’s human readers think 2026 has in store.
Note: Answers have been edited for clarity and brevity.
The AI bubble
