# 2025 was the year of agents, what's coming in 2026?

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Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/practical-ai/2025-was-the-year-of-agents-what-s-coming-in-2026.md
Podcast: [Practical AI](https://stenobird.com/podcast/practical-ai)
Published: 2026-01-09T20:08:07+00:00
Episode link: https://share.transistor.fm/s/e7fda8ce
Audio file: https://pscrb.fm/rss/p/dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/media.transistor.fm/e7fda8ce/c218cdfa.mp3
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/practical-ai/episodes/2025-was-the-year-of-agents-what-s-coming-in-2026
Duration seconds: 3075

## Resource

Reflecting on the transition from LLMs to autonomous agents in 2025, this episode forecasts the shift toward orchestration and energy-constrained computing in 2026. The hosts analyze how reasoning models and regulatory compliance will define the next frontier of AI implementation.

## Highlights
- Main idea: 2025 marked the transition from simple model assistance to autonomous agentic workflows
- Failure mode: Extended reasoning tokens improve accuracy but introduce significant latency and increased inference costs
- Practical takeaway: The next major bottleneck for AI scaling is shifting from GPU availability to power and energy constraints
- Main idea: Future competitive advantage lies in orchestration and managing complex, multi-service AI workflows
- Practical takeaway: Achieving regulatory compliance (like NIST 600-1) is becoming a primary driver for enterprise AI adoption

## Topics

AI Agents, Reasoning Models, AI Orchestration, Machine Learning Infrastructure, AI Compliance, NIST Standards, Energy Constraints, Autonomous Workflows

## Chapters
- 1:00 — The Shift to Agents: A look back at 2025 as the year AI transitioned from basic models to autonomous agents.
- 4:45 — Finding Value in the Hype: Discussing the difficulty of finding successful, practical use cases amidst the agentic hype.
- 8:30 — The Impact of Reasoning Models: Analyzing how reasoning tokens and hybrid models are reshaping workflows and introducing latency.
- 20:00 — Multimodal Realities: Evaluating the current state of multimodal inputs versus the continued dominance of text-based outputs.
- 27:20 — The Energy Bottleneck: Why power availability and energy consumption are becoming more critical than GPU counts.
- 39:20 — The Future of Orchestration: Predicting that the next year will focus on application-specific agentic systems and complex orchestration.
- 47:20 — Compliance and Complexity: The challenge of building compliant AI systems in regulated industries and the opportunity for consolidated solutions.

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## Transcript

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