Sixth edition, 143-page PDF, published 2026-09-15 (datePublished on the web page). The PDF is not in the Wayback Machine and mckinsey.com refuses scripted and WebFetch access, so only the web article (Wayback snapshot 2026-09-15) was read. It names all 14 trends and three groups (AI revolution, compute and connectivity frontiers, cutting-edge engineering) but not the printed order or the group of each trend, and gives no per-trend investment, job-posting or adoption figures. rank is null throughout; trend entries follow the order of the page's exhibit description. Forecast entries are from the page's own text.
Future of energy and sustainability technologies sits in the upper-right area with high innovation and high interest, and has the largest bubble (highest equity investment).
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Last year’s AI trend is now AI infrastructure and model architectures to more accurately reflect the foundational technologies that underpin AI.
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Advanced connectivity and future of life sciences and bioengineering score high on innovation (above 0.7) but lower on interest.
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last year’s future of bioengineering is now future of life sciences and bioengineering, which more fully reflects advances across the life sciences spectrum.
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Last year’s digital trust and cybersecurity is now cybersecurity and trustworthy systems, highlighting how advances in AI require security to be continually woven into integrated hardware and software systems.
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Cybersecurity and trustworthy systems and application-specific semiconductors sit in the middle range for both dimensions.
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Agentic AI is becoming the connective tissue of the enterprise
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Two newly highlighted trends join this year’s report: agentic software development and AI for scientific discovery and engineering.
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Two newly highlighted trends join this year’s report: agentic software development and AI for scientific discovery and engineering.
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quantum computing continues to advance, giving a glimpse into how it could soon solve problems that would otherwise be infeasible.
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Robotics, mobility, and immersive-reality technologies are converging to reshape how humans interact with digital and physical systems.
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Future of mobility has moderate interest but low innovation, with a relatively large bubble.
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AI has become an accelerant in robotics, creating a new class of autonomous bots capable of interacting with the world around them.
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Future of robotics and future of space technologies score low on both axes with small bubbles.
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Five of the trends—agentic software development, AI infrastructure and model architectures, AI for scientific discovery and engineering, the future of space technologies, and the future of robotics—are on track to receive more than double the investment in 2026 compared with 2025
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all trends, except advanced connectivity, are on track to generate higher year-over-year funding totals.
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US data centers running AI workloads alone are projected to consume as much electricity by 2030 as California does today.
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