1、STARTUP 2026 AI AGENTS MEAN BUSINESS What venture capitalists are looking for in the era of agentic AITABLE OF CONTENTSAI Continues to Evolve Across the Enterprise .3Investment Strategies Shift in the AI Era Sort Of .6Capital Concentration:Risk or Opportunity?.8Year of the Agents Part Two:Setting Up
2、 Real Progress .10Defensible Barriers Protect Competitive Advantage .12Early Adopters Are in Production,Finding Value .14What to Watch in 2026 .16Secrets of an Irresistible Pitch .17Riding the Next Wave of AI Innovation .19Next Steps .20Table of Contents|2 Startup 2026:AI Agents Mean Business AI Con
3、tinues to Evolve Across the EnterpriseAI hype is alive and well.2025 was named by many in tech as the“the year of the agents”as companies across industries and around the globe raced to infuse AI throughout their business functions.Business leaders felt the pressure from their peers to implement AI
4、at every point in their workflows for fear of being left behind.Its still too early to broadly measure the ROI of agentic AI.It has yet to achieve the level of autonomy and complexity at the core of its promise,but weve seen some key and proven workloads start to move into production,such as agentic
5、 coding.Agentic AI remains an area of tremendous excitement for businesses,venture capitalists and AI-focused startups with the potential to significantly impact innovation,business strategy,revenue and more.Last year,we sat down with investors at eight leading venture capital firms to gain their pe
6、rspectives on the state of AI in the startup space.This year,we did it again,with new and familiar faces.For this version of the report,we focused on how investors approach to AI startups is evolving and where they think AI in general,and agents in particular,are headed in 2026.We started off the co