Martyn Rhisiart Jones

Somewhere in Spain, 10th December 2025

Oh, brilliant. Gather round, comrades. It’s time for another installment of “Tech Executives Discover That Computers Need Electricity.” This time, they’ve dressed it up in a shiny frock and called it “2026 Data Trends.” Christ almighty, where do we even start?

Agent-Ready Data

Translation: “Your data is currently locked in a cupboard under the stairs. It is next to the Christmas decorations and a broken toaster. In 2026, some absolute weapons have realised that they need their little robot butlers to find data. To be useful, the butlers must actually locate the bloody data. Revolutionary stuff. Next week: fire discovered to be hot.”

GenAI For Data Engineering

Fantastic news! You don’t have to pay a data engineer £80k a year to swear at CSV files anymore. Now, you can pay OpenAI £800k a year to hallucinate the entire pipeline. Then, you can blame “the model” when it quietly turns all your revenue figures into pictures of dolphins. Progress!

Data Provenance

Or, as normal human beings call it, “knowing the source of this spreadsheet.” This is before Karen from marketing forwards it to the entire company with the subject line ‘FYI!!!’”. Apparently in 2026 we’ll have proper tools for this. Tools that will, of course, be ignored by the same people who still reply-all to 400-person email threads.

Compliance And Regulatory Changes

The EU AI Act is coming, lads! Quick, everyone, act surprised. You spent five years hoovering up everyone’s data like a Dyson on ketamine. Now, the grown-ups have finally decided to make you fill in some forms. Consultancies everywhere are preparing to release a 47-page PDF. The title is “How To Pretend You Care About Ethics.” It suggests you can continue doing exactly what you were doing before, but with more acronyms.

The Agentic Edge

That’s right, your AI agents won’t just live in the cloud, getting depressed about climate change. They’ll be out there on the factory floor. They’ll argue with conveyor belts and have existential crises next to the vending machine. Imagine a Tamagotchi with a law degree. It has the emotional stability of a Tory leadership candidate. Now, it controls the robots that weld car doors. Sleep tight!

Generative Data Democracy

At last! The dream is realised! Derek from accounts can now ask ChatGPT, “Show me sales by region.” He receives a confident answer that is 97% made up. However, it is presented in a lovely bar chart with rounded corners. Truly, we are living in the future Martin Luther King dreamed of.

Synthetic Data

Because real data is awkward, expensive, and occasionally comes attached to actual human beings with rights. It is much better to have your AI generate completely fake customers. These fake customers definitely don’t mind you training on their imaginary medical records. Gartner says 75% of businesses will be doing this by 2026. This is handy. Gartner also says 85% of statistics are invented on the spot. Beautiful synergy.

Data Sovereignty

Countries have noticed the behaviour of American tech companies. They treat national borders like speed bumps. As a consequence, countries have decided to do something about it. Panic stations! Suddenly, all the people have a different approach. They spent a decade telling us “data wants to be free.” Now, they are frantically constructing little national pens. These pens are for their data to reside in, resembling particularly boring geopolitical sheep.

And finally, the stirring conclusion: “Those who wait risk being left behind.”

Yes, thank you, Captain Obvious. The same profound insight you get from every single one of these wankathons since about 1997. Either get on the hype train. Otherwise, it would be crushed beneath its wheels. This is preferably while some venture capitalist in a hoodie live-streams your demise to LinkedIn with the caption “disruption hurts”.

Honestly, give me strength. In 2026, the data will be faster, wiser, and more autonomous. The people writing this guff will still earn six figures. They will state the bleeding obvious in the most constipated management-speak known to man. Marvellous. Can’t wait.

Thanks for reading!