What happened
McKinsey published the sixth edition of its flagship annual Technology Trends Outlook (143 pages, September 15, 2026), tracking 14 technology trends across six tangible measures of activity (search queries, news, patents, research publications, equity investment, talent demand) and adding two new domains: agentic software development and AI for scientific discovery and engineering. The report's most striking quantitative finding is that agentic AI often hurts rather than helps output: 'Our research finds that in 30 per cent of companies, productivity fell after teams began using agentic AI tools' and 'in one study, AI tools increased coding activity by 180 per cent, but shipped releases rose by only 30 per cent.' It also documents a deep developer trust gap — '46 per cent of developers worldwide actively distrust AI tools' accuracy, compared with 33 per cent who trust them' — even as equity investment in agentic software development jumped from negligible levels to roughly $5 billion in 2025 and crossed $61 billion in H1 2026, and AI infrastructure spending doubled in a single year.
Why it matters
This is the authoritative annual evidence base on where frontier technologies — and agentic AI specifically — are creating vs. destroying enterprise value, directly relevant to C-suite budgeting and capability-scaling decisions this quarter.
Action needed
Review the agentic software development chapter against your own engineering teams' measured productivity data before further scaling agentic tooling investment.