Darktrace: AI bubble could deflate in 2026

Sumit Bansal, VP for Asia, at Darktrace believes that the bubble may deflate a little next year. Bansal and several other Darktrace executives share their views for the industry in 2026.

Companies that chose technology because it looks AI savvy and not because it solves their security problems, will have a case of buyer’s remorse. These were among the predictions made by Darktrace as the cybersecurity vendor believes 2026 could be the year that see AI have the biggest impact on cybersecurity.

Specifically, Germaine Tan Shu Ting, VP Security and AI Strategy, APJ believes that two biggest hurdles to technology in 2026 will be choice and execution. As cybersecurity is about problem-solving, and AI is a technology, picking the right tool should still be a problem-centric discussion and it can be easy to lose track of that.

“There are many types of technologies in the market, and customers are at risk of picking a technology because it sounds like the most AI-savvy, not because it solves their security problem. Even if an organization picks the perfect technology, without a realistic plan for execution, and alignment of people, it’s not possible to reap the rewards,” said Tan.

Meanwhile, Tony Jarvis, VP and Field CISO, APJ believes communicating the need for tools that can protect against increasingly sophisticated threats to decision makers who may not have cyber backgrounds is key. This is especially relevant as many technologies are now being marketed as ‘AI solutions’, but the real-world results differ widely.

Another interesting prediction is on the AI bubble whereby Sumit Bansal, VP for Asia, (pictured above) believes that the bubble may deflate a little next year.

“There will be a correction in the market but not really an “AI bubble bursting”. This will make customers more discerning with what type of AI they use to help solve their cyber security problems,” said Bansal.

Shifting threat landscape

Just as it's been happening in 2025, 2026 will also continue to see the threat landscape shifting with more sophisticated threats. GenAI and Q-day fears will ultimately have more influence of these threats as well.

“We are approaching a tipping point where Gen AI threats will scale faster than the market can produce skilled human defenders. We can expect chaos in the cloud as more attacks targeting the big brands lead to mass downstream disruptions of their client base. Breakthroughs in quantum computing will enable quick, efficient breaking of encryption standards. Q-day is coming, and it will change the cyber landscape overnight,” said Victoria Baldie, Director Incident Response.

For Bansal, customers are looking for visibility of threats, detection and response in their hybrid environments including network, cloud and email. He believes phishing continues to be the largest concern due to the sophistication of phishing emails using AI. He also feels that Asian organizations who have invested in Microsoft M365 platform will need to augment their cyber resiliency.

This is where Abhi Abhyankar Head of Channel, Partnerships and Alliances, APJ sees partners playing an important role as cybersecurity threats continue to evolve at an unprecedented speed, making reactive approaches no longer sufficient.

“Agentic AI will be the new arena of war, identities will be compromised in seconds, and deep fakes will be the new norm. AI has become the first line of defence for every enterprise, enabling autonomous threat detection and response without disrupting business operations, and that means AI Governance will become a business imperative,” said Abhyankar.