2026: Scale AI. Prepare for Quantum.
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Join Kirstie Tiernan, BDO’s National AI Leader, as she breaks down the biggest AI and quantum shifts shaping 2026 - and what they mean for business leaders.
In this video, Kirstie shares practical guidance on scaling AI beyond pilots, building the right governance and training for adoption, and preparing for quantum-driven cybersecurity risks.
Watch now to learn what to prioritize today to scale these technologies with confidence and measurable impact.
AI Pulse February Newsletter Video Transcript
Introduction to the February Newsletter
Hello, everyone, and welcome to our February newsletter update. It is Kirstie Tiernan, and I am our BDO National AI leader. Thanks for giving your eyes a break and letting me walk you through this newsletter instead of making you read the whole thing. Let's be honest.
Shifting Focus to Execution in AI
We're all juggling a lot, and sometimes an audio briefing just hits better. So okay. Let's talk about what's actually changing in AI and quantum right now, and more importantly, it means for how you bring your business. So we have officially moved past, completely past the experiment and hope phase.
The Rise of Agentic AI
2026 is gonna be all about execution. Real impact, real outcomes, and in some cases, real headaches if we're not paying attention. So let's start with Agentic AI because this is not theoretical anymore. These AI agents aren't just responding to prompts.
They're actually doing what we always wanted them to do. They are starting to take action, which is exciting and scary all at the same time. Think about a procurement agent that automatically flags unusual vendor pricing by comparing it to the contract before it even hits AP. Or maybe it's the customer support agent that's not just answering questions, but actually resolving the ticket, closing it out end to end.
But here's the catch. These agents are still these overeager interns of the enterprise. Super useful, but you absolutely have got to exercise oversight unless you enjoy explaining strange decisions to your audit committee.
AI Integration in Enterprise Applications
Next trend is that AI isn't something you adopt anymore. It's something that's quietly showing up everywhere and in everything. By the end of the year, we're gonna have forty percent of the enterprise apps will have built in task specific AI. And if you are running a company where you have some of that technology that's out for your customers, you better get on the ball because people are going to expect to be able to use AI in every application they interact with. It will just become a basic part of customer service and a customer experience.
So for example, think about all your apps that are gonna start showing up with AI enablement. Your CRM might start writing your follow-up emails for your sales team. Your ERP is gonna start spotting anomalies before your analysts even do.
Things like Microsoft Copilot would be so baked in to workflow that people forget what it was like before we had those tools. And I dare you to try to take away my current AI tools. I I can't live without them. Right?
Emerging Trends in Quantum Technology
This is the less I think it's less of the new initiative, and it's more ready or not, it's here, and you better jump on board. So let let's go to some of the the next trends around quantum because I think quantum is finally moving from someday to you better start budgeting for it. And we're seeing there's faster machine learning because of it. We're seeing these hybrid quantum kind of classical workflows.
We're seeing early fault fault tolerance systems. And, yes, quantum as a service because why not? Everything should be offered as a service, and that allows you not have to build your own lab. So here's a real example for CFOs.
If you store any long lived sensitive data, let's think about maybe you've got contracts, loan files, health records, r and d, you now have a steal now, decrypt later problem. A bad actor can take that data today, sit on it, and unlock it once quantum becomes powerful enough. Meaning, the financial risk isn't just futuristic. It's already accruing.
Financial Risks of Quantum Technology
Budgeting for these quantum safe encryption is becoming the new we should have moved to the cloud moment.
Boards are seeing this shift too. I think that's a big trend that we're starting to see is nearly three quarters of boards are increasing spend on emerging tech and r and d. Now at the same time, almost a quarter of directors completely admit that they feel behind. And that's surprising because keeping up with AI and quantum while running a business is absolutely impossible.
And forty four percent of these boards are planning to bring in outside expertise. That means that leadership knows this is real, and they do not want to guess on it. But here's the truth. Most AI pilots aren't failing because of the technology. They're failing because of skill gaps, governance gaps, data readiness gaps.
Challenges in AI Implementation
You think about skill gaps. You know, if your CIO and your IT team is trying to run AI, but the business isn't driving the use cases, you're gonna have a problem. Right? And even when you do get a team together that's going to drive your AI strategy, do they know what's out there? Do they know what's possible? Do they understand the road maps for your current systems that you have invested in?
Do they know how to start and where to start? And then let's say you develop that perfect use case around a custom AI model that's gonna predict the future and and solve all your problems. Is the data underneath that high quality enough for that prediction to ever get accurate enough to use?
And then there's this simple reality around the fact that people need training before they trust great tools, and they gotta have time for training and adoption. You know, a great AI model cannot fix a broken process, and so scaling AI takes structure. It takes optimization before you automate, before you use AI, it's not magic. Right?
Cybersecurity in the Age of Quantum
And then talk about trends. You can't talk about 2026 without cybersecurity being a top trend. Quantum is forcing a complete rethink of encryption. If quantum can eventually crack what you rely on today, you're going to need quantum safe standards on your roadmap, ideally before your competitors, your regulators, even your attackers force this issue.
Because here's the bottom line.
Strategic Scaling of AI and Quantum Technologies
I think the advantage in all of the trends that we're seeing in 2026, it's not gonna come from dabbling in AI or watching quantum from the sidelines. It's gonna come from scaling these technologies with purpose, tying them to your business outcomes. The number of times we've had clients say, I need to figure out what I'm doing with AI because my CEO went to a conference, now they wanna understand what we're doing, and I don't know. Right?
Tie it to what you actually want to cheese achieve as a business and your strategy, not just doing AI for AI's sake. Right? Preparing your people, both your people that are new to AI as well as your power users. Do not forget about enabling your power users.
And then building the governance and security that can hold the weight of the modern technologies that you're about to employ.
Conclusion and Future Outlook
So it's going to be a wild 2026. We are here for it and excited to follow-up with you, and thanks for watching, and I will see you in the next month update.
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