The technology sector is accelerating into 2026, propelled by a hyper-velocity artificial intelligence (AI) moment that is redefining competitive advantage. According to the annual EY Top 10 Opportunities for Technology Companies in 2026 report, the pace of AI innovation and adoption is driving companies to act with urgency to position themselves for the next wave of transformation.
Executives are shifting to operationalise AI-native strategies that help to ensure safe and reliable practices while capturing value through agentic-driven solutions. Amid the changes lie the potential to do more, to enhance efficiency and to capture the market.
Here are the top 10 opportunities for technology companies this year:
- Scale faster with merger & acquisition, and joint-venture ecosystem plays in this hyper-velocity AI moment. According to the report, 83% of tech CEOs surveyed are prioritising JVs and alliances in 2026.
- Design for agentic interoperability and physical AI. This includes cross-platform and cross-cloud agentic interoperability, enabling products to operate seamlessly across ecosystems while unlocking new automation and orchestration layers. Interoperability thus becomes the core design principle as enterprises demand flexibility across multi-cloud environments and heterogeneous stacks.
- Empower functional leaders to operationalise safe, reliable AI, especially as deployments mature and scale. As observability improves, safe, reliable AI has become an operational imperative, extending beyond ethics and compliance to protecting both revenue and reputation.
- Rethink commercial strategy for the agentic era. Customers are starting to expect frictionless experiences and transparent value, and not just access or usage. Some 89% of tech CEOs surveyed say they are exploring innovative pricing models, such as outcome-based pricing.
- Optimise for flexibility in model selection. Closed and open AI models offer different advantages. Companies will need to weigh the tradeoffs, such as transparency, customisation and costs (open), versus performance, support, and integrated safety (closed).
- Design sovereignty by default and run a borderless talent model. Companies need to embed jurisdictional controls from the outset, balancing performance with compliance across regions. These decisions influence cost, latency and scalability, and they force modernisation of talent strategies toward borderless pods and regional skill hubs. Yet, only 47% of global tech executives believe their AI strategy effectively enables talent across the organisation.
- Deploy embedded technical specialists to navigate AI platform complexity. Embedding technical talent directly into business units or project teams can accelerate adoption, improve service delivery quality and help provide continuity as platforms evolve. But, this raises questions around talent acquisition and retention, financial investment, scaling and impact measurement.
- Rethink your tax strategy for the digital infrastructure and AI era. For technology companies, tax must be considered proactively when making decisions about where to build, how to structure IP ownership and how to allocate costs and profits across borders.
- Institutionalise AI FinOps to make finance the ROI engine. Well-resourced pilots and exploratory use cases need to move from experimentation to deployment; make AI core to finance operations, such as in forecasting, accelerating close cycles, automating compliance and using predictive analytics to drive smarter decisions.
- Redefine enterprise security for AI, identity and nation-state threats. At a time when AI is weaponised by adversaries and demanded by regulators, cybersecurity and identity are no longer IT functions; they are strategic enablers of growth, trust and market access.
Velocity will be the defining factor of success in 2026. The lightning-fast pace of AI innovation makes it the top priority for how companies scale and capture advantage. Organisations that move fast, without sacrificing interoperability or governance, will be better positioned to seize winner-takes-most scenarios.
“Technology companies in Southeast Asia face a more complex landscape: uneven digital readiness, fragmented regulations, infrastructure gaps, as well as limited access to AI capabilities and talent,” says Joongshik Wang, EY Asean Technology, Media & Entertainment and Telecommunications Leader. “In 2026, success will go to those who can navigate these constraints while deploying AI and other innovations effectively and securely, as well as translating them into commercially viable outcomes.”
“Leaders can win by making concrete moves such as pursuing targeted joint ventures, embedding sovereignty by design, and building platforms that support agentic interoperability and physical AI at the edge,” adds Mr Wang.
By embedding governance and aligning incentives across their ecosystems and partnerships, companies will build resilient, adaptive systems that deliver differentiated value and maintain the agility to thrive amid rapidly evolving geopolitical, regulatory and technological landscapes.
The full article with the top 10 opportunities for tech companies in 2026 can be found here.
