In 2026, AI hectacorns might go public. That process, historians would tell you, was a harbinger for the dot-com bust as hopeless balance sheets were ignored in favor of overhyped promises that eventually collapsed. Will the A-IPOs prove to be a similar come-to-Jesus moment? It’s one theme I’ll be watching closely in 2026, but it’s certainly not the only one.

Trillions of dollars hang in the balance of two questions that dominated this year and loom perilously large over the next. “Will the artificial intelligence bubble burst?” and “Will China beat the US?” Searching for answers is the theme of this year’s book recommendations from Bloomberg Opinion’s technology columnists. We’ve chosen a list that sets the intellectual table for the tech year ahead: new books with the latest insights, established ones with renewed relevance and even instructive fiction.

The deal has been described as bringing to an end a long-running saga over the app’s future. In reality, it’s merely sweeping it under the rug, conveniently taking it off the agenda now that the political will to tackle the issue has subsided.

"Is the White House’s artificial intelligence policy America First or simply Silicon Valley First? After this week, I’m leaning sharply towards the latter. It’s surely the only way to reconcile Washington’s conflicting policy choices, where China is made a useful bogeyman until Big Tech is interested in selling Beijing its wares."

"This isn’t a pivot from the metaverse. It’s a rebrand. Not for the first time, Meta’s chief executive officer has reframed his ambitions to make his spending more palatable to Wall Street — and it’s worked."

"In tech, the most effective time to depart is when one innovation cycle winds down in preparation of the next. Thanks to his failure to see the coming AI freight train, Cook has missed that window. If 2026 is indeed the year he steps aside, he will likely be doing so when Apple is weakened."

"Pichai’s leadership is why the arrival of ChatGPT can be seen as Google’s “Pearl Harbor moment” — not the beginning of the end but the clarifying moment at which, after a period of costly indecision, it became clear the company had to commit fully to the AI race. Pichai took the decisive step to restructure the company to give more power to the brightest AI mind he had at his disposal, DeepMind founder Demis Hassabis. Lesser CEOs would have seen Hassabis as a threat; Pichai harnessed him as his best asset."

The question is how limiting being in the White House’s crosshairs will prove to be.

"The fact hypocrisy is thick in the air does not make Google’s current complaint less valid. What’s good for Google, in this case at least (and maybe at most), is good for healthy competition across the rest of the AI pack. The company, or ideally companies, that win the browser battle will be richly rewarded — and they should get there through merit, not pre-installation or dark patterns."