Dan Martell - Top 9 AI Trends I'm Betting My Bank Account On in 2026

00:00:00.000 Here's a crazy stat.

00:00:02.080 By the end of 2026, AI spending will reach $2 trillion.

00:00:06.780 And that kind of explosion is going to create nine major trends

00:00:09.800 that most people have no idea is coming.

00:00:11.820 I'm not talking about ChatGPT getting slightly better.

00:00:14.660 I'm talking about a complete transformation of daily life as we know it.

00:00:19.500 I've spent years investing in AI companies,

00:00:21.920 building AI products and tracking every major move in this space.

00:00:25.500 And what I'm seeing behind the scenes

00:00:26.860 is about to make 2026 the biggest year in AI yet.

00:00:31.080 It's gonna take over businesses, shopping, 0.97

00:00:33.760 even your freaking toothbrush, 0.96

00:00:35.540 and you have the opportunity to be ahead of all of it. 0.97

00:00:38.320 So let's start with trend number one,

00:00:40.020 AI will buy from AI.

00:00:41.900 Currently, AI does a lot of cool stuff,

00:00:44.160 but the humans have to be in the loop.

00:00:46.080 People still have folks on their team

00:00:48.020 to do things like buying things for them.

00:00:50.460 Every purchase today for most people

00:00:52.380 requires human approval.

00:00:53.980 Emails, most people are using AI to write them.

00:00:56.040 And then when the reply comes in, the person used AI to reply, 90% of mine already are via my

00:01:02.220 assistant. Humans will be taken out of that process in 2026. Here's why I know that. Experts

00:01:07.840 say that by 2028, not far away, 90% of all business purchases will be handled by AI agents,

00:01:14.580 moving $15 trillion in spend. Essentially what that will look like is AI bots will do the research 0.89

00:01:21.360 for you, buy for you, return things for you, coordinate things for you, scheduling things

00:01:25.540 for you. And then on the other side, the AI will receive that order, coordinate any missing data

00:01:29.940 with your AI without you involved and just take care of the transaction. All of this gets done

00:01:35.100 with no human intervention. Here's a simple example. Your fridge sees everything in the

00:01:41.160 fridge. It'll know you're low on tomatoes. It'll know that you don't have enough chicken and it

00:01:45.120 will automatically coordinate with the other AI apps to purchase and get it delivered. So all of

00:01:51.060 sudden you'll never have to tell anybody what you want to reorder do you see how cool this gets so

00:01:57.140 here's what this means for you your job shifts from placing orders to managing the ai that places

00:02:02.900 orders from configuring them for monitoring them giving it more data see the ai can get better if

00:02:08.180 you don't learn how to talk to it and coordinate it and train it the cool part is faster ordering

00:02:13.140 means fewer mistakes and it works 24 7. doesn't take rest days doesn't take sick days doesn't talk

00:02:19.380 back. It just gets it done. So that's AI becoming the customer. Now here's something even more

00:02:25.160 personal. AI is about to be part of every single device in your home. Trend number two, everything

00:02:30.960 gets smarter. Here's the current state. Most of the devices in your house are kind of dumb. Think

00:02:37.280 about if it has a battery or it's got power to it. They say this is a smart toothbrush. Why? Because

00:02:42.540 it vibrates. That's not a smart toothbrush. The smart devices, that was like a branding thing.

00:02:46.760 they exist, but they're not actually smart. They're not learning. They're not personalized.

00:02:51.420 They don't really help you. 2026, massive transformation. The smart home market,

00:02:56.900 it's $174 billion industry by the end of the year. My brother's a home builder. So he tells

00:03:01.800 me about this. The AI brain inside of every device, your toothbrush, your coffee maker,

00:03:07.100 your thermostat, the doorbell, your fridge, literally your TV will change the way these

00:03:12.260 devices talk to each other your scale is going to talk to your fridge okay like it's going to tell

00:03:17.520 you you can't order that because you told me you wanted to lose weight so I'm going to help you

00:03:22.500 here's what this means for you your home becomes an AI helper that knows what you need people say

00:03:28.180 to me it's like Dan that's a scary future you know what here's what I know everything that's

00:03:32.080 been electrified will be cognified right now it's the laptops it's your phone but everything that

00:03:36.760 has power or a battery will have cognition

00:03:40.220 because the AI is getting smaller, faster,

00:03:42.780 and deployable on those little devices

00:03:44.560 and they'll be able to talk and coordinate.

00:03:46.320 No different than you set up AI automations

00:03:48.480 to do things for you at work.

00:03:49.840 That comes into your home through the devices.

00:03:52.420 If your toothbrush is about to have AI,

00:03:54.940 your business better have it.

00:03:56.320 But most business owners say I'm using AI,

00:03:58.700 I'm using ChatGPT, but your team really isn't.

00:04:01.260 You don't know how to automate stuff.

00:04:02.440 You don't even know how to do custom code.

00:04:03.880 In the world of disposable apps,

00:04:05.320 you need to know how to do that.

00:04:06.540 So if you want my internal AI playbook

00:04:09.000 for how I deploy AI in every frigging department in my life,

00:04:12.960 just find me on Instagram and message me AI business

00:04:15.540 and I'll send it right over.

00:04:17.180 Look, your devices are about to get smart,

00:04:19.540 but AI won't just be helping with the task.

00:04:21.580 It's about to help you with everything else in your life.

00:04:24.420 Trend number three, everyone will have an AI assistant.

00:04:27.820 Today, everyone still handles their own calendar

00:04:31.000 and their email and their research reports.

00:04:33.200 But the truth is we've seen a glimpse of this already.

00:04:36.060 the Ironmans of the world, right?

00:04:37.880 Where everybody's got a Jarvis.

00:04:39.780 Wake up, daddy son.

00:04:41.580 Welcome home, son.

00:04:42.720 It's crazy because workers still spend 60% of their time

00:04:45.820 on boring admin work.

00:04:47.760 None of that work is being helped or co-pilot

00:04:50.440 or created with AI to make it personal.

00:04:52.660 It's just stuff that's gotta get done.

00:04:54.940 The transformation in 2026 is crazy.

00:04:58.100 Soon every worker gets their own AI assistant

00:05:01.120 where it does 50, 70% of the daily task on its own.

00:05:05.360 not a tool. We already got that. An actual AI assistant that knows you. It knows your

00:05:11.620 sensitivities. It knows your beliefs. It knows your values. It learns your writing style. Yes,

00:05:15.980 I already have that. No, you don't because you got to tweak it every time. Imagine you never

00:05:19.800 have to touch it the first time you ask it to do something. You actually say, this is the outcome

00:05:23.480 I want. And it goes to work to get you that. It manages the project files. It updates your Slack.

00:05:28.060 It updates your Trello board. It updates everything. And it's not just me saying it.

00:05:32.160 People using AI assistants are already saving more than 30 minutes per day, and that's just

00:05:37.180 the tipping point. Here's an example. You wake up and you find out your AI already rescheduled

00:05:42.380 three meetings that had conflicts. You drafted 15 email replies and sent some of them in your

00:05:47.560 voice, and it prepared a summary of all the documents and information you needed to know

00:05:51.500 to start your day with a vengeance. Here's what it's going to mean for you. You get to work on

00:05:56.540 important and strategic work. You become the manager of the AI. You configure it. You teach

00:06:01.740 it this is already here today it's called rlhf reinforcement learning with human feedback meaning

00:06:08.140 that's what you get to do in the future you get to let it learn on its own and you give it the

00:06:12.620 data to learn from and then you give it feedback to make sure it's doing the right thing that is

00:06:16.460 how ai is trained today it's just it's going to move to the people so that you have an ai assistant

00:06:21.500 doing it all and you get to tweak it so that you can focus on what really matters your creative

00:06:26.540 work the things that brings you joy the stuff that allows you to have the time to talk to the people

00:06:31.020 So that's what business really is.

00:06:32.540 Business isn't B2B, it's H2H, human to human.

00:06:36.200 The AI does all the computer stuff

00:06:38.080 so that you can talk to somebody.

00:06:39.560 So that's personal AI doing half your job.

00:06:42.820 Now next, let's talk about something

00:06:44.280 you deal with almost every day, customer service.

00:06:47.000 Trend number four, no more waiting on hold.

00:06:50.160 It is wild that when my credit card has fraud,

00:06:53.700 I have to wait to talk to a person.

00:06:56.100 See, and it's crazy because they got support teams

00:06:57.940 that needs humans answering phone calls nine to five.

00:07:00.560 if it's after hours and nobody's around you're out of luck here's how i know in 2026 that's

00:07:05.680 going to change completely ibm and zendesk say ai can handle 80 of customer questions and cut

00:07:11.280 service costs by 30 percent it's just not widely deployed today you've already seen this you can

00:07:18.000 chat with support you can have it book meetings for you can answer questions you know you can

00:07:22.640 qualify leads it sounds fully human it never complains it never gives you attitude and the

00:07:27.760 coolest part it doesn't take any days off here's an example i want to go to the gym in the morning

00:07:32.720 i call the gym it's closed i want to talk to somebody get sign up get a day pass answer my

00:07:37.280 questions know if you have equipment if you don't have ai answering that call you don't get me there

00:07:41.440 in the morning as a customer you have ai sit there and take that call it'll get me as a customer

00:07:46.560 right now there's tools like youratlas.com that's part of my portfolio where all the inbound calls

00:07:51.920 to the business is handled by AI.

00:07:54.100 It qualifies, it answers questions,

00:07:56.540 it scheduled a call, do the sales call,

00:07:59.040 send them a text message with a link

00:08:00.580 so the business owner can focus on doing the business.

00:08:04.240 But this is what it means for you.

00:08:05.840 Businesses never close.

00:08:07.340 Customers can get help 24 seven.

00:08:09.660 There's no wait time.

00:08:10.680 I would love to call a bunch of different companies

00:08:13.540 to spend more money with them

00:08:15.000 if I knew I wasn't gonna be put on hold.

00:08:16.620 Okay, you as a business owner,

00:08:17.920 you'll never miss a lead again.

00:08:19.360 You'll never miss a customer again.

00:08:20.600 You'll never get a pissed off person

00:08:22.100 that doesn't bother Kong

00:08:22.940 because they don't want to talk to somebody

00:08:24.080 that's uneducated on your team.

00:08:25.220 You just hired because they're 22

00:08:26.480 and they don't know anything about your company.

00:08:28.620 Oftentimes the customer knows more about your product

00:08:31.420 than the person you hired to support them.

00:08:33.780 AI knows more than the customer

00:08:35.360 and the support person combined times a thousand.

00:08:37.780 If you want to check it out for yourself,

00:08:38.920 go check out youratlas.com

00:08:40.380 and actually do the demo on the website

00:08:42.340 to see how it works.

00:08:43.720 So here's the big idea, no more waiting on hold.

00:08:46.040 And that same AI technology

00:08:47.820 is about to run entire departments in your business.

00:08:50.600 Trend number five, AI agents running entire departments.

00:08:55.240 Today, every department still needs a human, okay?

00:08:58.460 You still have somebody that leads, sales, support,

00:09:01.120 your finance department.

00:09:02.320 It's very human-centric.

00:09:04.000 Growing a department today,

00:09:05.280 it's gonna be completely different.

00:09:06.800 I'm already seeing it.

00:09:07.740 My head of finance, Jared,

00:09:09.020 literally has a plan already in place

00:09:11.040 where 80% of his work, AI-powered.

00:09:13.480 Tools like HelloFrank.ai is literally a CFO AI

00:09:17.040 that small business owners use already

00:09:19.040 to manage and run the whole finance department.

00:09:21.880 The good news is it's gonna allow you

00:09:23.280 to talk to the people on your team,

00:09:24.760 invest in your people, develop your people

00:09:26.420 to make them better.

00:09:27.680 And it's not my opinion.

00:09:28.760 This is what the data says.

00:09:29.880 I think I read like by 2030,

00:09:31.640 30% of hours currently worked in the US

00:09:34.240 could be done by AI.

00:09:35.380 Instead of hiring five salespeople

00:09:36.920 and three finance people,

00:09:37.860 you have an AI agent handling sales

00:09:39.960 and handling AI finance.

00:09:41.640 Now, does that mean the whole stack of sales are AI?

00:09:44.240 Maybe not, maybe 90% of it, maybe 80% of it,

00:09:47.100 but it's definitely not gonna be none.

00:09:49.040 That is the future, AI running departments.

00:09:52.760 How does this impact you?

00:09:54.180 First off, some departments,

00:09:56.040 you'll become a director of the AI, not managing people.

00:09:59.360 The human focus is now on strategy.

00:10:02.080 It's on special cases.

00:10:03.480 It's on big decision.

00:10:04.660 It's on sequencing because sequencing equals success.

00:10:08.140 That's what you should get good at.

00:10:09.540 Check out hellofrank.ai to see how this looks,

00:10:12.580 but it will automate the whole finance department

00:10:14.900 for small businesses.

00:10:16.040 So now we talked about how AI replaces departments.

00:10:19.000 Let's talk about how this affects your home

00:10:20.800 from a different angle.

00:10:22.340 Trend number six, household AI robots.

00:10:25.680 In my home, I still have to do certain things.

00:10:28.940 And I wish that I didn't have to pick up after myself

00:10:31.360 because then I could move through the world easier.

00:10:32.880 My wife would get upset with me 1.00

00:10:34.120 and she wouldn't text me saying,

00:10:35.160 I rarely get insulted when you leave your stuff around.

00:10:37.060 I get it.

00:10:37.860 I have this rule that I'm trying to get to

00:10:39.400 where you can't tell what room I've been in

00:10:41.900 if I've been in the house.

00:10:42.980 That's my goal.

00:10:43.800 I don't know if I'll get there, but that's the philosophy.

00:10:46.340 If I had what I'm about to share with you,

00:10:48.000 that would be there today.

00:10:49.520 The truth is today,

00:10:50.840 the best we have is like a robot vacuum.

00:10:53.280 Where we're going in 2026

00:10:55.060 is a completely different world.

00:10:57.580 And we've seen it already.

00:10:58.920 Cheap AI powered robots with arms

00:11:01.460 that pick things up, that help with tasks.

00:11:03.560 I'm talking load the dishwasher,

00:11:05.700 clean up after yourself.

00:11:07.120 All this stuff, if you had a full-time butler,

00:11:10.020 the AI will do for you.

00:11:11.720 And you might be like,

00:11:12.460 oh, Dan, that'll never happen.

00:11:13.840 All right, go check out Optimus by Tesla, Elons.

00:11:16.820 Check out Neo, okay, backed by OpenAI.

00:11:19.700 Check out Figure 3.

00:11:20.960 They just came out with their latest model by Figure AI.

00:11:23.800 When you see these things, it looks like it's fake,

00:11:26.400 like CGI, but I'm telling you,

00:11:27.920 these are real robots that learn by watching you do things

00:11:30.800 and they're smart.

00:11:32.660 The household robot market will hit a $17 billion market

00:11:36.420 by the end of 2026.

00:11:38.460 Elon has 800,000 square feet of production manufacturing

00:11:42.740 in Texas ready to go for the optimist.

00:11:45.740 And in 2026, you're gonna start going

00:11:48.060 to your friends' houses and meeting their robots.

00:11:50.060 It's gonna be wild.

00:11:51.760 So what does this mean for you?

00:11:53.640 This is where I get super excited.

00:11:54.820 The guy who wrote the book, Buy Back Your Time,

00:11:57.140 this one is near and dear to my heart.

00:11:59.080 Think about all the time you spend on household chores.

00:12:02.440 All that time you get back now in your week.

00:12:04.480 You get to go to the gym.

00:12:05.960 You got time to call your parents.

00:12:07.560 You got time to read books.

00:12:08.900 You get time to take care of your kids better.

00:12:11.060 You get time to take care of yourself better.

00:12:13.160 Here's my prediction.

00:12:13.980 In five years, hiring a human to clean your home

00:12:17.160 will sound as crazy as hiring a human

00:12:19.680 to run calculations for you on a calculator.

00:12:22.580 So now we got robots in your house doing chores,

00:12:25.180 but it won't be just in your house.

00:12:26.960 It'll also be in your car.

00:12:29.140 Trend number seven, AI robots will drive your car.

00:12:32.480 Today, we have self-driving cars.

00:12:34.680 A lot of the Teslas have full self-driving, FSD,

00:12:37.580 built into it.

00:12:38.240 But what's happening is a lot of these car manufacturers

00:12:40.140 are like, look, we could try to solve that problem,

00:12:42.520 But then we got to build the AI know-how

00:12:44.620 and we got to change the hardware in all the cars

00:12:46.680 for it to work so that the car can drive itself.

00:12:48.860 Here's what you're going to start to see in 2026.

00:12:51.100 And you kind of see it with the Waymo.

00:12:53.260 The Waymo is self-driving.

00:12:54.700 If you've never used it, it's crazy.

00:12:56.280 AI-powered robots sitting in your car will drive your car.

00:13:01.260 Now every vehicle becomes self-driving.

00:13:04.460 The same robot that can do all the household chores

00:13:06.820 or doing work for BMW or UPS stores today,

00:13:09.920 that's what Figur and all these companies do,

00:13:11.540 will be able to see the road, they'll use the pedals,

00:13:14.660 they'll turn the steering wheel, just like a human.

00:13:17.280 Like your 2005 Tacoma now becomes an AI-powered truck.

00:13:21.780 Tesla announced they're gonna build

00:13:23.060 50,000 Optimus robots in 2026

00:13:26.080 using the exact same software and hardware as their cars.

00:13:30.160 The same AI-powered chip that they built for themselves

00:13:32.900 for the cars are gonna go in the robot.

00:13:35.140 Why wouldn't they drive the car?

00:13:36.640 How much more productivity could you get

00:13:38.540 if you could sit in the backseat with your laptop

00:13:40.780 and your robot drives you around.

00:13:43.140 So with AI robots driving your car,

00:13:45.420 I think we can expect for AI to take over even more.

00:13:49.120 Trend number eight, AI-powered delivery.

00:13:51.860 I mean, today, if you think about it,

00:13:53.500 delivery needs still humans.

00:13:54.960 Like there's still somebody that drops off

00:13:56.480 things at my house, the Amazon guy, the food delivery, okay?

00:14:00.320 Which means that it's limited in its ability

00:14:02.620 to deliver me stuff at speed.

00:14:04.140 And there's still high costs for that last mile, right?

00:14:06.480 The last mile is going from the warehouse in a city

00:14:09.920 to the home. It's actually the most expensive part on getting something from point A to point B.

00:14:15.360 Okay. In 2026, what you're going to see is delivery drones. You're going to see warehouse

00:14:20.460 bots. You're going to see last mile robots everywhere running up and down. You're already

00:14:24.440 seeing in certain cities where their food delivery box is driving down the sidewalk and they like

00:14:29.000 come and then they text the owner and you open your door and then you take the thing out of the

00:14:32.360 box and it takes a picture of you, a picture of the stuff and it's off to the races. Amazon has

00:14:36.780 already said this, they aim to deliver 500 million packages per year by drone by 2030. Just the drone

00:14:43.320 side of things. And I think it starts in 2026 in a meaningful way. Here's how this makes your life

00:14:48.640 better. First, faster, cheaper delivery as a customer. If we can get the last mile down to

00:14:53.900 zero, then everything gets cheaper because that's where you're paying for stuff. And think about it,

00:14:57.700 in new business ideas, they get unlocked. If all of a sudden the cost of logistics and delivery

00:15:01.940 goes to zero, there's a whole lot of other businesses that can come from that. And if you

00:15:05.340 run a business with delivery, this is a game changer. We're kind of moving from like people

00:15:09.860 bringing stuff to stuff bringing itself. So all these parts of life will 100% be infused with AI,

00:15:16.460 but there's one final trend, the one that determines if you win or you get left behind.

00:15:22.620 Trend number nine, knowing AI will be the biggest career advantage. Today, AI is still like the nice

00:15:28.760 to have. It's definitely needed in my world, but there are still jobs that don't like make it a

00:15:33.060 must. Most people literally are like dabblers at best. And companies haven't yet made it a

00:15:38.780 requirement. They haven't said, show me your proficiency, just like they would to say,

00:15:43.580 show me that you can use Google Docs or show me that you can type fast enough or whatever it is,

00:15:48.280 right? Like that's not there yet. 2026, gloves are off. The number one conversation I have with

00:15:54.940 all the CEOs that I coach is how do I force my employees to adopt it? How do I get them to learn

00:16:00.340 it. I'm done. I'm sick of it. AI hackathons are going to be the new future. Hiring new people

00:16:05.280 that are AI native that can code, can build apps, can actually configure the AIs. That's the new

00:16:10.380 norm. If you don't learn how to do this, trust me, 2026 is going to be the year where you're

00:16:16.180 going to start to feel it in your job. This is not just ChatGPT. This is knowing how to use the AI

00:16:21.940 tools and prompt it to do your job. And the crazy part is the next wave of millionaires and

00:16:27.500 billionaires will come from AI innovators and AI experts. And here's how I know this. On LinkedIn,

00:16:33.080 job posts mentioning AI has grown 3.5 times faster than any other job category. And AI skills can

00:16:40.560 literally boost your salary up to 56%. I'm literally looking at my team's execute, and the

00:16:46.040 person that learns how to set up, make, and automate their work so that actually frees up

00:16:49.720 their time to go work on harder and more fun projects, they're getting the opportunities.

00:16:54.260 So here's what this means for you.

00:16:55.800 Learning AI now puts you ahead of 95% of people.

00:16:59.440 Early adopters win big.

00:17:00.840 They always have.

00:17:01.640 Laggards, they're the ones that get disrupted

00:17:03.600 and left behind.

00:17:04.720 It's not like you're not hearing this from people.

00:17:07.320 The future isn't AI versus human.

00:17:09.560 It's AI powered humans versus the rest.

00:17:12.380 The gap between AI users and AI avoiders

00:17:15.200 is getting wider every freaking day.

00:17:18.220 People want to say, well, I don't agree.

00:17:20.880 I don't like it.

00:17:21.780 Here's the thing I know.

00:17:22.840 A belief that doesn't support my future

00:17:25.240 isn't a belief I want to nourish.

00:17:27.380 And there's no way you're gonna stop this from happening.

00:17:30.760 It's a foregone conclusion.

00:17:32.420 I just don't want you to think you've got another year.

00:17:35.180 If you haven't made the decision to go all in on AI in 2026,

00:17:39.620 this is the year where it's gonna hurt your bank account,

00:17:42.620 it's gonna hurt your opportunities,

00:17:43.980 it's gonna hurt the people you love the most

00:17:45.720 because you won't be prepared.

00:17:47.540 And that's why I continue to try to show you

00:17:50.000 and explain you and bring the data

00:17:51.480 and give you the use cases and invite you into my world

00:17:55.000 where I'm inside of it at the highest level,

00:17:57.960 building software with the smartest engineers in the world,

00:18:01.280 seeing 18 months into the future.

00:18:03.180 And I bring this to you.

00:18:04.200 And if you think, well, I don't know how to get started,

00:18:07.040 I'm telling you yet again, you use AI to teach AI.

00:18:11.360 Let it close the gap in real time.

00:18:13.240 Talk to it, ask it to teach you, it will.

00:18:15.920 There's no more excuses.

00:18:17.220 Stop pretending not to know.

00:18:19.040 I need you to win.

00:18:19.980 So if you're down this year, comment below AI.

00:18:22.940 I wanna hear AI in the comments below.

00:18:25.280 That's your commitment to me and to yourself

00:18:27.960 that 2026 is the year of the trend

00:18:30.540 where you jump on them and you change your life.

00:18:32.580 And remember, if you're an entrepreneur

00:18:33.860 and you wanna implement AI into your business,

00:18:35.940 just find me on Instagram and message me AI business

00:18:38.820 and I'll send you over my internal playbook.

00:18:40.740 And if you wanna learn

00:18:41.620 what are the six most profitable AI businesses

00:18:43.920 to start in 2026, click here and I'll see you on the other side.

Dan Martell - January 30, 2026

Top 9 AI Trends I'm Betting My Bank Account On in 2026

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