McKinsey Releases Technology Trends Outlook 2026 Highlighting 14 Research Domains

McKinsey has released the McKinsey Technology Trends Outlook 2026, its sixth edition report examining the frontier technologies affecting business and society. Authored by Michael Chui, Roger Roberts, and Tanguy Catlin, the 143 pages of analysis suggest that the technology story of 2026 has moved from screens into the physical world. This shift involves acceleration in power grids, data center chips, intelligent robots, and agentic systems used for discovering chemical compounds.

Scale remains a primary focus, particularly regarding the energy requirements for AI. Energy technologies alone received nearly $200 billion in investment in 2025. This represents one of the highest capital inflows for any technology domain during that period. Simultaneously, spending on AI infrastructure doubled within a single year. The report states that the defining questions today are not only about what technology can do, but also about who can build the hardware and assemble the skilled workforce to deploy these systems in the real world.

The 14 trends identified in the report are organized into three broader categories: AI revolution, compute and connectivity frontiers, and cutting-edge engineering. McKinsey notes that the lines between these domains are blurring, with much innovation happening in the gaps. Two new domains were added this year to reflect recent shifts: agentic software development and AI for scientific discovery and engineering. The report states these additions were made because AI has fundamentally altered software construction and is changing how research and engineering are performed.

Several existing trends were renamed to reflect their current state. The previous AI trend is now AI infrastructure and model architectures, intended to reflect the foundational technologies underpinning AI. Digital trust and cybersecurity has been updated to cybersecurity and trustworthy systems, which highlights how advances in AI require security to be woven into hardware and software. The future of bioengineering is now the future of life sciences and bioengineering. One trend from last year, cloud and edge computing, was removed from the 2026 report. The authors explain that these technologies have matured and reached wide adoption, resulting in measured innovation levels that are not as high as more frontier trends.

The researchers used six tangible measures of activity to assess these trends. These include search engine queries, news articles, patents, research publications, equity investment, and talent demand. The innovation score combines patent data from Google Patents and research publications from The Lens. The interest score combines press mentions from Factiva and search data from Google Trends. Equity investment tracking includes venture capital, M&A, private equity, and public investments sourced from PitchBook. This data does not include corporate operational expenditures. For space and quantum technologies, the report builds on research from McKinsey’s April 28, 2026 Quantum Technology Monitor report.

Adoption across these trends is measured on a scale of 1 to 5 based on expert interviews. A score of 1 represents frontier innovation where technology is nascent and largely unproven in a business context. A score of 2 involves experimentation with prototypes. A score of 3 indicates piloting in limited business use cases. A score of 4 means scaling is in progress across the enterprise. A score of 5 represents a fully scaled technology that has become an integrated standard.

Four of this year’s trends are AI-specific, while AI underpins and amplifies the other ten. AI is described as an accelerant in robotics, creating autonomous bots capable of interacting with their surroundings. In the software field, AI is used to change how code is built. In the life sciences, it is used to help companies discover new drugs faster than before. The report also highlights innovation in the foundations of technology infrastructure, including semiconductors and cybersecurity operations. Historical data provided in the report notes that since the Industrial Revolution, GDP per capita has grown by more than 14 times, having reached approximately $1,500 by the early 1800s.