50 AI Predictions for 2026 - Part 2

In this episode of The AI Daily Brief, Nathaniel Whittemore continues his AI predictions for 2026, focusing on competition, market dynamics, and politics/policy. He anticipates Anthropic maintaining its coding lead, potentially leading to a deeper Microsoft partnership, and suggests OpenAI will likely introduce ads to ChatGPT. Whittemore also discusses Grok's position in the AI race, Meta's potential re-entry, and the growth of Chinese open-weight models. He predicts potential acquisitions of agent labs like Cursor and GenSpark, and examines the public market's interaction with AI development, highlighting the importance of private credit appetite for data center infrastructure. Furthermore, he explores the political narratives surrounding AI, including job displacement and data center opposition, and forecasts increased policy discussions around UBI and ethical AI certifications. He concludes by predicting that both ChatGPT and Gemini will reach one billion active users in 2026.