The year is 2026. Robots enter the home, while white-collar workers pour into the streets to protest artificial intelligence.
That's the near future, according to one venture capitalist who's betting heavily on how AI reshapes daily life and work.
Ethan Choi is a partner at Khosla Ventures, where he invests in companies he believes can define entire markets. His portfolio include the enterprise search giant Glean; fintech Ramp, whose valuation jumped to $32 billion in a recent funding round; and ClickHouse, the fast-growing data startup taking aim at Snowflake. Before joining Khosla, Choi was a partner at Accel.
We asked Choi how he expects the year ahead to unfold, which areas are ripe for investment, and which trend will lose steam. The interview has been edited for clarity.
What's one investment theme you'll lean into in 2026?
In 2026, we'll see robotics experience its own GPT-3 moment. Not a mass consumer breakthrough like ChatGPT, but a foundational leap in capability.
One of the leading robotics models will demonstrate human-level intelligence applied to the physical world, mastering complex spatial, temporal, and embodied tasks that mark the beginning of true general-purpose robotics.
What's something in your space that will lose steam?
We will find out whether there is a real consumer behavioral change towards building vibe-coding apps and whether these apps have durable value or if enterprises can find durable use cases beyond prototyping.
How do you expect the exit environment to evolve? Bonus points if you want to name who is going out to IPO first.
Many folks are expecting a meaningful market correction in 2026. If that's the case, we'll continue to see more M&A than IPOs but I still believe the strongest companies can go out in any environment.
Grayscale, a crypto asset manager, will go out first.
Other candidates will be Ethos and Klook.
How do you see the balance of power shifting between large platforms and startups, or between founders and investors?
We are seeing even more egregious valuations and behavior from founders and investors relative to zero interest-rate policy times, and I have a hard time seeing how we can sustain these kinds of private valuations without commensurate explosive revenue materializing.
How will company building change in 2026?
We're seeing that the motions of building teams are evolving significantly towards a more efficient and AI-powered future.
On the product and engineering side, we are seeing the role of the product manager being challenged with the engineering org taking on more responsibility of understanding end-customer needs and driving product roadmap, with the help of AI that can synthesize vast quantities of customer feedback.
On the go-to-market side, we are seeing leaner sales functions with the ability to use AI to help with targeting, outreach, and customer engagement.
Give us your most out-there, contrarian prediction.
We'll have the first of dramatic anti-AI protests in certain countries with white-collar workers, not blue-collar workers, demanding job security in the face of AI disruption.
