How might tech shape our world in 2026?
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 7 January 2026
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Will the boom in artificial intelligence continue in 2026? We hear how the world’s biggest companies are jockeying for position in the race to dominate the field. After a year of record spending on AI, we look at how sustainable that type of investment might be in the year ahead.
Plus - what gadgets could become mainstream in 2026?
The BBC's Technology Editor, Zoe Kleinman, and North America technology correspondent in Silicon Valley, Lily Jamali, give Will Bain their predictions.
If you would like to get in touch with the show, please email: businessdaily@bbc.co.uk
Presenter: Will Bain Producer: Matt Lines
(Picture: Guests including CEO of Meta Mark Zuckerberg; Amazon founder Jeff Bezos; CEO of Google Sundar Pichai; and CEO of Tesla, SpaceX, X and xAI Elon Musk, arrive before the 60th Presidential Inauguration in Washington, on Monday, 20th of January 2025. Credit: Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts. |
| 0:08.0 | Hello and welcome to Business Daily on the BBC World Service. I'm Wilbane. |
| 0:12.9 | Today, Chip Wars, spending like we've never seen before in the battle for supremacy in artificial intelligence. |
| 0:20.0 | It feels once again like we're on the cusp of another defining year for global technology |
| 0:25.0 | and some of the companies and characters who are coming to shape the future of how we work |
| 0:29.7 | and interact. |
| 0:30.5 | So today and the latest of our look ahead to what might be in store for the global economy in |
| 0:35.2 | 26, we're talking big tech and the AI arms race. |
| 0:42.2 | Yes, no companies were perhaps more talked about in 2025 than the largest technology companies in the |
| 0:47.9 | world, whether it was the money they were spending to get ahead in AI, navigating geopolitical |
| 0:53.5 | tensions about who could or couldn't buy |
| 0:55.5 | their products and services, or even having their bosses pitch up at a presidential inauguration. |
| 1:00.6 | Those companies threaten once again to shape the year ahead, not just for global stock markets, |
| 1:05.0 | but also for how in particular we work and the sort of jobs we might do in the years to come. |
| 1:11.8 | So we gathered two of our busiest BBC business correspondents of 2025, our technology editor, Zoe Clyman, and our North |
| 1:17.9 | America technology correspondent, Lily Jamali. So look at what 2026 might have in store for the |
| 1:23.8 | world's most valuable clutch of companies. So straw poll between the two of you, |
| 1:29.9 | how many times have you been asked whether AI is a bubble or not? |
| 1:34.6 | On air, off air, anywhere. |
| 1:36.2 | Oh, my goodness. |
| 1:37.1 | Eleventy billion, I think. |
| 1:38.8 | How about you, Lily? |
... |
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