We have spent the last three years gazing at the stars, debating when AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) will arrive to save us, or replace us. We’ve built pilots. We’ve dazzled the boards with “magic” demos. We’ve treated AI like a science fair project.

But as we look toward 2026, the party is over. The “cleanup crew” is here. And that is excellent news.

The End of Experimentation: Enter Operationalization

I believe 2026 will mark a clear turning point: the shift from fascination with AGI to obsession with ROI.

In the enterprise world, the time for pure experimentation with AI is drawing to a close. Instead, organizations are entering a phase of operationalization, where practical application and tangible results take precedence over theoretical exploration.

The Pilot Purgatory

For many companies, 2024 and 2025 were spent in what can be described as “Pilot Purgatory.” During this time, thousands of innovative proofs of concept (PoCs) were created. These PoCs worked well in controlled settings but faced significant challenges when trying to scale within the complexities of legacy systems, imperfect data, and detailed compliance requirements.

We learned a hard lesson: A demo is not a deployment.

This experience highlighted a key lesson: impressive demos do not guarantee successful deployments. The novelty of interacting with chatbots has worn off, and financial leaders are now less willing to fund AI innovation without clear proof of value. Consequently, the important, and sometimes uncomfortable, question is, “Where is the value?”

The 2026 Mandate: Scale or Fail

In 2026, the winners won’t be the companies with the smartest models; they will be the companies with the smartest workflows.

We are moving away from the abstract pursuit of general intelligence toward the concrete pursuit of utility. This looks less like sci-fi and more like engineering:

• From General to Specific: Transitioning from large, costly, all-purpose models to smaller, fine-tuned, domain-specific ones that deliver profitability by focusing on targeted tasks.
• From Chatbots to Agents: Shifting from passive question-and-answer interfaces to active agents that can execute workflows and update core business systems.
• From Magic to Metrics: Moving beyond the pursuit of “delight” as a key performance indicator to emphasizing measurable efficiency improvements, revenue protection, and decision support.

The “Boring” Work is the Profitable Work

Real ROI in 2026 will be found in the unglamorous plumbing of the enterprise.

It’s not about an AI writing a sonnet; it’s about an AI automatically reconciling complex invoices so your finance team can focus on strategy. It’s about supply chain prediction models that save 3% on logistics costs, a “boring” number that adds millions to the bottom line. And about a contact center optimizing efficiency by improving “boring” KPIs.

This shift requires a new kind of discipline. It demands that we stop asking “What can this technology do?” and start asking “What business problem are we actually solving?”

The Zappix Approach

AGI is an exciting goal, and it could happen someday. But we can’t pay today’s bills with tomorrow’s singularity. The year 2026 is the time to stop treating AI as a magic trick and start using it to boost efficiency and profits.

This is exactly Zappix’s mission: helping organizations implement AI at scale by focusing intently on workflows that deliver measurable business outcomes and tangible, real-world results. Let researchers continue exploring future scientific frontiers – now is the time for the rest of us to get to work.

From AGI to ROI. Let’s build.