What’s next for AI and data streaming – five predictions for 2026

In my 2025 outlook, I argued that data streaming platforms (DSPs) were approaching a tipping point, moving from early adoption to a widely used driver of competitive differentiation. I also cautioned that ‘old guard’ culture would slow some organizations down.

Twelve months on, much of what I wrote proved directionally right. Yet the context has shifted faster than even the most optimistic expected. The most important change has been the pace and breadth of AI adoption. Pilots have given way to hundreds of live use cases orchestrating multi-step processes across everything from fraud prevention to customer service, raising the bar even higher for the data that underpins it all.

And while cultural resistance hasn’t vanished, competition is eroding it. Leaders now point to outcomes, not hype. Data teams, too, have moved with it. Streaming engineers are spending less time on plumbing and more on in-stream governance, reusable data products ...