AI Gets A Promotion?

It’s clear 2026 will be the year artificial intelligence crosses a threshold from experimental tool to core workplace infrastructure. In his debut newsletter (we at Capital in Context admire a punny title), FGS Global Head of AI & Innovation Aaron Kwittken examines this inflection point for leaders with a New Year’s resolution to deliberately and responsibly operationalize:

• Agentic AI gets to work. AI agents are beginning to monitor media, track sentiment, manage workflows and coordinate briefings autonomously. This reduces time spent on operational churn and increases time available for strategic counsel. Teams should focus on training agents around brand voice, escalation thresholds and decision rules.

• Synthetic audiences will rewrite research. Synthetic audiences allow teams to simulate investor, analyst, media and activist reactions in days rather than weeks. This accelerates message refinement, sharpens executive prep and improves the quality of subsequent human research. The advantage is speed, iteration and earlier risk visibility.

• Multimodal intelligence will enhance crisis and reputation management. Next-generation models can process video, audio, text and market data together. This enables unified situational awareness across hearings, earnings calls, social response and competitor moves. Teams should reorganize monitoring around issues and outcomes rather than channels.

• Strong internal governance will be smart strategy. The EU AI Act sets clear expectations for transparency, oversight and documentation. Systems built to meet those requirements will travel more easily across jurisdictions, particularly as U.S. regulation remains fragmented.

For more insights, read Aaron’s full post and subscribe to Talk Nerdy To Me on LinkedIn.

Legacy media is adapting to new realities in dramatic ways. Organizations like Fox News Media and CNN are experimenting aggressively, implementing tools like AI and market-based forecasting in ways that could reshape journalism.

Fox News is working with Palantir to embed AI into its newsroom workflows. The collaboration includes a “digital twin” of the business that mirrors operations while protecting editorial independence. The move is being eyed warily by critics, who note CEO Alex Karp’s support for President Trump and his erratic performance at the DealBook Summit.

Meanwhile, CNN is experimenting with prediction markets through a partnership with Kalshi. The network plans to integrate market-generated probabilities into coverage, allowing forecasts based on collective participant pricing to inform reporting. Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour envisions “financializing everything” and turning differences of opinion into tradable assets. While prediction markets can surface weak or dispersed signals and sometimes outperform polls, their integration into mainstream news carries reputational risk if market prices are mistaken for verified fact.

These initiatives reflect a broader trend: legacy media in 2026 are seeking efficiency, insight and new signals, while grappling with the boundaries of editorial judgment. Success will hinge on integrating technology thoughtfully, balancing operational advantage with credibility, and maintaining oversight over how AI and predictive tools shape the news.

Anthropic, the AI lab behind the Claude chatbot, is laying the groundwork for what could become one of the largest tech IPOs ever. The company has retained Wilson Sonsini to manage the process and is reportedly exploring a funding round that could value it above $300 billion. Our Digital Insights colleagues offered their analysis on the move and its far-reaching implications for capital markets, competitive positioning and the broader trajectory of AI commercialization. 

The move positions Anthropic in direct competition with rival OpenAI, which is also conducting preliminary IPO planning. Being first to the public markets could give Anthropic both a capital advantage and a significant boost in credibility as these frontier AI labs compete for leadership in large-language models and next-generation AI research.

A successful offering would represent a landmark test of investor appetite for AI companies with high costs, rapid revenue growth and valuations typically reserved for mature tech giants. It would also serve as a bellwether for the sector, signaling whether public markets are ready to absorb the extraordinary scale and pace of AI commercialization. Early, informal discussions with major investment banks suggest a potential public listing as soon as 2026.

For executives and investors watching the AI frontier, the offering would signal public markets’ readiness to engage with frontier AI. The outcome could shape funding dynamics, competitive positioning and strategic priorities across the rapidly evolving AI landscape.

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