Tech in 2026: Inside the AI bubble

Is 2026 the year that AI hype meets reality? In a new mini-series from Tech Tonic, the FT’s tech editor Murad Ahmed speaks with the paper’s reporters about what they'll be watching. Do tech industry insiders think the huge amounts of capital that have driven the AI boom will continue? How will challenges to large-language model AI systems play out this year? And are chief executives expecting AI technologies to force job cuts? In this episode, we hear from the FT’s venture capital correspondent George Hammond, AI correspondent Melissa Heikkilä and writer of the AI Shift newsletter Sarah O’Connor for their views on AI’s financial faultlines, how the technology will evolve and what kind of disruptions to expect in the world of work. Free to read: SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic prepare to launch landmark IPOs Computer scientist Yann LeCun: ‘Intelligence really is about learning’ The AI Shift: Agentic AI is coming for quantitative research

You can listen to Tech in 2026: Inside the AI bubble online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

Tech in 2026: Inside the AI bubble is an episode from FT Tech Tonic by Saragosa Manuela.

This episode is 40:08 long.

This episode was published on Jan 14, 2026.

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