Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! I’m Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer of Mansueto Ventures. Each week this newsletter explores inclusive approaches to leadership drawn from conversations with executives and entrepreneurs, and from the pages of Inc. and Fast Company. If you received this newsletter from a friend, you can sign up to get it yourself every Monday morning.
Twenty twenty-six will be a year of financial corrections, AI-driven biological breakthroughs, and new thinking about cybersecurity and executive protection—at least according to the CEOs I recently asked to provide bold prognostications. Here’s how 12 of them responded.
New threats, new protections
Rick Caccia, CEO of AI security platform WitnessAI, believes 2026 will bring the first major AI-driven cyberattack that causes significant financial damage. After that happens, he predicts corporations will augment their existing security budgets, and those deals will close three times faster than current cycles as companies move fast to secure their systems.
“Currently, enterprise AI spending remains largely compliance-focused as companies prepare for regulatory requirements in the absence of active threats,” Caccia says. An AI-powered attack will highlight the need for additional security investment, he says, adding, “This will create a new market dynamic where AI security moves from ’nice to have‘ to ’business critical‘ overnight.”
Ted Bailey, founder and CEO of Dataminr, and Balaji Yelamanchili, CEO of ThreatConnect, see business leaders demanding threat intelligence that’s tailored to their specific organizations in 2026. Amid tight budgets and staffing shortages—not to mention AI threats—companies need real-time intelligence about threats, communicated in the context of their businesses and investments.
They say information that can’t answer the question How does this affect my organization? is unhelpful, and that 2026 will see organizations matching data about external threats with the effectiveness of their internal controls to understand their true vulnerabilities.
Filip Kaliszan, CEO and cofounder of software-driven building security company Verkada, predicts that attacks on politicians and executives will drive a “new era of investment and standardization in executive protection.” Rising threats, ranging from harassment and doxxing to high-profile physical attacks such as the killing of UnitedHealthcare’s Brian Thompson—will prompt boards of directors to think differently about C-suite security.
“Just as cybersecurity teams measure dwell times, breach costs, and vulnerability exposure, executive protection teams will increasingly quantify risk reduction and operational impact—how many threats were identified, potential losses avoided, or disruptions mitigated,” he says.
AI infrastructure evolves
KR Sridhar, founder, chairman, and CEO of Bloom Energy, maker of fuel-cell energy systems, predicts that AI data centers and large-scale manufacturing facilities that need massive, reliable energy will move to onsite power rather than relying solely on the central grid. “As AI’s explosive growth collides with grid limitations, businesses and regulators will accelerate adoption of next-generation energy models that deliver clean, affordable, and abundant power,” Sridhar says. “This is essential for building a future where innovation and sustainability go hand in hand.”
And Sami Issa, director and CEO of Global AI, believes the world will treat sovereign AI—a nation’s ability to use its own infrastructure and data to produce AI—the same way it treats national energy grids. “This shift may look sudden from the outside, but from my vantage point, the demand signals are already impossible to ignore,” Issa says. “Nations will compete to secure gigawatt-scale, single-tenant capacity, and the organizations that move early will define the next decade of AI capability and security.”
Evan Beard, CEO and cofounder of Standard Bots, predicts the United States will hit 45,000 new industrial robot installations as AI-powered robots prove they can handle sustained production. He believes that first-time automation buyers, especially small to midsize manufacturers, will embrace the technology as industrial robots become more accessible and affordable. “By year-end, those new deployments will empirically confirm what American manufacturers already tell us: When companies adopt advanced robotics, they become more cost-competitive, improve productivity, and retain or grow their workforce in more technical and higher-wage roles,” he says.
AI: big and small
Bam Azizi, CEO and cofounder at Mesh, a global payment network, predicts the true engine of growth for agentic commerce—AI agents handling digital transactions—won’t be fueled by consumer shopping but by business-to-business applications, especially micropayment processing. “Agents are set to perform thousands of high-velocity, fractional transactions for API (application programming interface) calls and cross-border services that traditional card rails can’t handle,” Azizi says.
Micha Breakstone, cofounder and CEO of biotech company Somite AI, predicts venture capitalists this year will prioritize investing in biotech companies that essentially transform cellular biology into a predictive engineering science that can transform medicine and drug development. He asserts that these companies “will be valued less like traditional biotech and more like Tesla. The value proposition to investors is not just the individual car (the drug), but the ‘autonomous driving software’ (the platform) that powers it.”
A coming correction
A few CEOs expressed concerns about overheated financial markets. “I’ve been in private equity for 31 years, and I’ve never seen anything like the current level of froth in the credit markets,” says Graham Weaver, founder and CEO of Alpine Investors. Indeed, corporate bond issuance and growth in the $1.1 trillion private credit market showed little sign of slowing last fall.
“I can’t predict when this ends—maybe it’s 2026, maybe not—but as night follows day, it will end,” Weaver says. “When it does, and when debt becomes less available and the froth begins to fade, [over-leveraged] companies could face a very painful reckoning. My advice is to prepare now so the de-leveraging becomes a soft landing rather than a crash landing.”
Sam Miller, CEO and cofounder of payments app Kasheesh, offers an even starker warning: “In 2026, America could face the largest financial correction in modern history, and AI will not be the safety net for everyday Americans.” As AI scales, he says, corporations will gain efficiency and speed, but small businesses and consumers will struggle. “We need AI built for inclusion, designed for those being left behind, to create a financial system that helps everyone rise, not just those already ahead.”
Then again . . .
If these projections feel unsettling, you can always take solace in the words of Kunal Kapoor, CEO of Morningstar, who takes a refreshingly contrarian stance: “I predict that most predictions will not come true!” (Disclosure: Morningstar’s executive chairman, Joe Mansueto, owns Inc. and Fast Company’s parent company.) Kapoor adds: “Put me in the optimist camp when it comes to thinking about the impact changing technology will have on our industry, the economy, or business landscape.”
Indeed, being a Modern CEO requires a good measure of enthusiasm and sanguinity in the face of change and uncertainty, which we’re sure to experience throughout 2026.
Your predictions
What big changes are you anticipating in 2026? Send your bold predictions to me at stephaniemehta@mansueto.com, and I’ll compile the most compelling prognostications in a future newsletter.
Read more: unpredictable predictions
- Axios Pro Rata’s Dan Primack collected one-line predictions on AI, life sciences, and more
- Three futurists weigh in on how AI will change the world in 2026
- AI predictions from a ChatGPT pioneer