Technology and Innovation Community

Link to the interactive report 'AI agent trends 2026' from Google Cloud below:

interactive report

It includes 5 shifts that will redefine roles, workflows, and business value in 2026:

- Todor

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Todor Kostov
Director
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Great post Todor. 

Several important insights within the document:

• "In this new model, every employee-from an entrylevel analyst to a senior vice president-becomes a human supervisor of agents"
• "An agentic system is a digital assembly line-a humanguided, multi-step workflow that orchestrates multiple agents to run a business process end to end"
• "The true value in 2026 begins with augmenting the capabilities of individuals and teams, and continues to grow by making the entire business run more intelligently and efficiently, 24/7, at scale."
• Agent2Agent (A2A) protocol:  LLMs power many AI agents but are limited by static training data and a lack of direct interaction with external systems. The Model Context Protocol (MCP) overcomes this by providing a standard way for LLMs to connect to external tools and data sources, enabling real-time access and actions. In addition, A2A protocol using MCP to interact with external agents developed using different frameworks (e.g. OpenAI Agent vs CrewAI Agent) e.g. "For example, an AI agent from a media company could connect to a retailer's agent to showcase the details and pricing on a specific product shown in streamed or broadcast content."
• Agent Payment Protocol (AP2): What happens when a non-human entity (the agent) is making the final transaction decision, with pre-approval from a human?
  An agent initiating a payment with a human's oversight and guidance under a new framework.  This raises critical questions about how to prove user-given
  authority for a purchase, how a merchant can be sure an agent's request is accurate and not a hallucination, and who is ultimately accountable in case of fraud e.g. "PayPal is creating agentic shopping and commerce experiences through adoption of industry leading protocols such as Google's Agent Payments Protocol (AP2)"
• Agentic Concierge: An agentic concierge is a proactive system that doesn't wait for a client complaint. It monitors systems for triggers and resolves problems using real-time data to provide insights and take actions with human guidance and oversight e.g. The greatest promise of agentic AI in 2026 is moving healthcare from a reactionary system into a predictive learning health system.

Link to the interactive report 'AI agent trends 2026' from Google Cloud below:

interactive report

It includes 5 shifts that will redefine roles, workflows, and business value in 2026:

- Todor

------------------------------
Todor Kostov
Director
------------------------------