Insights

Agentic AI is moving to the center of corporate technology strategy. According to Samjong KPMG Economic Research Institute, KPMG International published the “KPMG Global Tech Report 2026” (January 2026), surveying 2,500 tech executives across 27 countries on the use and outlook of AI, data, and other innovative technologies. 88% of respondent companies are already investing to embed agentic AI into their systems, and 36% of executives expect digital workforces (agentic AI, etc.) to make up 36% of their tech organization's core labor within two years.

Technology internalization maturity improves substantially, but gaps widen. The share of companies rating their technology internalization as sufficient rose 36 percentage points year-on-year to 83%, and 79% expect to advance at least one maturity level in 2026. Yet 56% of companies still say their technology strategy is failing to keep pace with the speed of technological change — showing the gap between strategy formulation and execution remains a structural challenge.

Common traits among high performers: lean organizations, early adoption, low spend burden, and digital transformation. Companies delivering above-average ROI share four traits: lean organizational structures, early adoption of technology change, low spend burden, and the ability to internalize digital transformation as enterprise-wide strategy. 90% of tech executives plan to expand and strengthen technology ecosystems and partnerships to access required expertise, and 87% agree that maintaining industry competitiveness requires taking more risk on new technology.

What this means for M&A. Global tech leaders' expanded agentic-AI investment implies three directions for M&A. First, the 90% demand for expanding technology-ecosystem partnerships will likely escalate from simple collaboration into strategic acquisitions of companies holding core AI capabilities. Second, as the maturity gap widens between mature and early-stage adopters, laggards are likely to accelerate bolt-on acquisitions of agentic-AI specialists to close the gap. Third, in anticipation of digital workforces making up 36% of core labor, valuations of HR-tech, AI orchestration, and process automation companies are rising quickly — narrowing the window for early positioning.

Source → KPMG International “KPMG Global Tech Report 2026” (January 2026)