AI technology is evolving at such an incredible rate that even the experts at the heart of the industry can have a hard time keeping up. Fortunately, in the Snowflake for Startups program, I’m having daily conversations with early stage founders and investors that help me understand the change that’s underway.

Following Snowflake’s 2025 State of AI Startups Report, I recently sat down for an updated report with eight world-class investors from across the globe to capture the signal through the noise of 2026. These venture leaders shared their unique insights on how agentic AI is shifting the business landscape:

• Rohini Chakravarthy, Managing Partner at NewBuild Venture Capital
• Sunil Chhaya, Co-Founder and General Partner at Kearny Jackson 
• Guy Fighel, Partner at Hetz Ventures 
• Carl Fritjofsson, General Partner at Creandum 
• Bryan Hale, Investor at Anthos Capital 
• Shravan Narayen, Partner at IVP 
• Tim Tully, Partner at Menlo Ventures 
• Sumangal Vinjamuri, Co-Lead B2B AI Investment at Blume Ventures 

The result of those conversations is our latest report, “Startup 2026: AI Agents Mean Business,” and if 2025 was defined by a race to implement AI everywhere, 2026 is the year of ROI.

What we found is a market maturing at a blistering pace. The “AI tourists” of last year have been replaced by enterprise buyers who are no longer interested in experimentation for its own sake. They’re becoming more focused on demanding measurable outcomes. While many in the industry heralded 2025 as the “year of the agents,” our conversations revealed that 2026 is expected to be the year that real breakthroughs will start to emerge. 

“Soon the world will stop its random open exploration with AI and rather look at where real ROI from AI is created,” says Creandum General Partner Carl Fritjofsson. “Instead of trying the latest tech, more attention will be focused on results and bottom line.”

We’ve moved from thinking of agents as “autonomous actors” to agents as scoped, instrumented and governed tools that are driving massive margin improvements in once tech-conservative industries like logistics, insurance and legal.

This maturity brings a new set of hurdles for founders. The “graduation rate” from Seed to Series A has tightened significantly. The bar for what constitutes a “moat” has been raised. Hetz Ventures partner Guy Fighel says, “You can’t build an entire company that’s dependent on access through a third-party provider because the first question is, what happens if they block or start to charge you? Your entire business model will die.” Rather, today’s winners are building defensibility through proprietary data loops, deep workflow integration and what our panel calls “commercial empathy” — the ability to speak a customer’s language fluently.

Ultimately, this report serves as a roadmap for navigating a landscape where the “low-hanging fruit” of 2024 and 2025 has been picked, and the focus has shifted to the complex, high-stakes tasks that define true enterprise value. Whether it’s the personalization of product experiences or the rise of physical AI in robotics, the opportunity for startups remains vast, provided they can balance experimentation with security and governance. 

“At some point, enterprises want to centralize on a certain set of products, on data that’s approved, systems that pass security hurdles,” says IVP Partner Shravan Narayen. “All the standard enterprise requirements have gone out the door, or been put on pause, but they’ll come back.”

Read the full report, “Startup 2026: AI Agents Mean Business,” to explore how these eight VCs are evaluating pitches, where they see the “white space” in a market dominated by large labs, and how they’re helping the next generation of builders turn agentic potential into a durable business. 

And if you’re building in the startup space, Snowflake wants to be your partner in that journey. Explore our Startup Accelerator or visit us at the Silicon Valley AI Hub — we’re ready to help you build the future.