2026: the year of the AI agent for global businesses

Key Takeaways

• 2026 is emerging as the year of the AI agent for global, enterprise-scale businesses.
• Most business leaders expect agentic AI to transform their organizations by 2026, with many already seeing ROI.
• Leaders prioritize workflow automation and autonomous decision-making, where AI agents orchestrate tools and end-to-end business processes.
• Real-time AI translation, including DeepL Voice, is now seen as essential for productive global meetings and collaboration.
• Agentic and Language AI reduce context switching, remove repetitive tasks, and free teams to focus on higher-value work.
• More than half of executives expect AI to create net new roles, not replace existing jobs.
• DeepL's Language AI suite helps enterprises streamline workflows, communication, and translation across documents, apps, and systems.

“Businesses are ready to scale, they’re betting big on agentic AI to do it … and they’re right to do so.” That’s DeepL Chief Technology Officer Sebastian Enderlein’s description of a huge shift in AI’s trajectory that’ll arrive in 2026. 

New DeepL research proves him right on all counts. It also shows how the enthusiasm for agentic AI is multiplying confidence in the business value of other AI forms.

How AI agents are reshaping business strategy: 6 key stats

Six key findings from the DeepL research emphasize the speed and scale of agentic AI adoption. They also show the impact this is having on AI strategies as a whole. 

These are the key agentic AI stats:

• 69% of global business leaders expect agentic AI to transform their business by the end of 2026.
• 25% report this is already happening.
• 71% prioritize AI investments in workflow automation.
• 63% prioritize autonomous decision-making from AI.
• 54% say real-time voice translation will be essential in 2026.
• 51% believe AI will create more new roles than it replaces.

Our data comes from a survey of more than 5,000 global executives across the U.S., U.K., France, Germany, and Japan. We asked them about their expectations for AI in 2026 and their investment priorities. We also explored the returns they expect and the returns they’re already seeing.

Their answers make it crystal-clear that 2026 will be the year of the AI agent. As DeepL CEO Jarek Kutylowski put it, “AI agents are no longer experimental, they are inevitable.”

From tools to teammates: the new role of AI agents at work

Businesses were under growing pressure to demonstrate real impact from their AI investments in 2025. They’ve found a solution in agentic AI. 

Of global business leaders, 69% now confidently expect agents to drive a major business transformation by the end of 2026. This includes 25% of business leaders who say the transformation is already underway. And 22% say AI agents have already proven their value through tangible ROI and efficiency gains.

Business leaders recognize that agentic AI offers a new route to value. It’s not just another tool or set of tools to add to their tech stack. It’s a new role for technology in orchestrating the tools they already have. 

The great frustration of enterprise tech investment has been apparent. The more productivity tools you add to a tech stack, the greater the productivity drag from employees having to switch among them. 

Knowledge workers end up acting as IT troubleshooters, figuring out how to navigate different systems. They drown in tools meant to help them. 

AI agents, with their ability to orchestrate different systems, can take over all these time-consuming tasks. They exist to make workflows work.

A glance at AI investment priorities makes it clear why this new role for AI is so welcome. In our research, 71% of business leaders told us they’d prioritize AI investments in workflow automation. They also said they’re interested in end-to-end task execution across business processes. 

Separately, 63% confirmed that autonomous decision-making was an AI characteristic they’d prioritize. And these are the areas in which AI agents excel.

How AI and real-time translation are transforming global business communication

A similar movement is happening in the language and localization area. Executives know global businesses can’t continue to function effectively when every translation involves a trade-off of time, quality, and cost. They need all three.

This is particularly evident when it comes to international meetings and conversations. Within a year after launching DeepL Voice, over half of global business leaders see enterprise-standard, real-time voice translation as essential.

At DeepL Dialogues in Berlin (Nov. 2025), Aramark VP of Strategy and Development Jodi Sweed shared compelling evidence of the impact of high-quality, real-time voice translations. She explained how when working with global teams, calls scheduled for an hour would easily stretch 90 minutes. 

Why? Participants struggled to make themselves understood. 

Implementing DeepL Voice boosted productivity by regaining this lost time and ensuring participants heard expert voices in any language.

Visit DeepL AI Labs and explore our latest innovations in Language, voice, and agentic AI.

AI that elevates people: productivity, new roles, and growth

The AI applications that business leaders are turning to have one crucial characteristic in common: They elevate productivity and help each employee do more. 

When this happens, businesses find the best way to grow is to hire more people, not fewer. Over half of leaders expect AI to create more roles than it replaces.

Agentic and Language AI sweep away repetitive tasks, save time, and enable easier and more effective collaboration. Their value doesn’t come from replacing knowledge work but from making the most of it: 

• Accelerating it
• Increasing its productivity 
• Growing its impact

That’s always been the promise of AI. Business leaders are confident they’ve found the applications to deliver on that promise.

Explore DeepL Language AI for your business

Agentic AI is reshaping how enterprises work, and Language AI is at the center of it.

DeepL Language AI is how enterprises act on that shift. Translator and API support high-quality translation across your documents, apps, and systems. Meanwhile, Write and Voice help your teams communicate clearly in writing and in live conversations.

And we're more than an AI translator. DeepL's Language AI suite is built for enterprises ready to move faster, communicate clearly, and operate seamlessly across languages and markets.

Contact Sales to explore the value our specialized AI tools can deliver for your business.