{"slug": "the-theory-2026-ai-survey-results", "title": "The Theory 2026 AI Survey Results", "summary": "Theory's 2026 AI in Practice Survey, fielded to 455 senior technical builders on 22 September 2026, found security and governance rose from sixth to first among pain points in twelve months, with 43% of respondents rating it the most important pain point versus 22% for evals. The survey also found 45% of teams now route queries across models — 23.7% on a router they trained and 21.5% on a proprietary one — while 54.7% send every query to a single model, and among the 259 teams whose agents write and execute code, 62% host their sandboxes on Cloudflare, three times the closest competitor. Only 10% of the 455 builders say security tooling delivers the most value today, while 18% expect it to lead in the future, the largest expected gain of any area.", "body_md": "The 2026 Theory AI Survey surprised us, just as the 2025 edition did. In 2025, we found that context, limited AI performance. In 2026, that seems to be solved.\n\n455 senior technical builders replied to give us a cross-section of the AI ecosystem today.[1](#fn:1)\n\n## Security is the biggest barrier to adoption\n\nSecurity rose from sixth to first among pain points in twelve months. 43% of respondents rate security & governance the most important pain point, & evals come in second at less than half, 22%.\n\nOnly 10% say security tooling delivers the most value today. 18% expect it to lead in the future, the largest expected gain of any area.\n\n## Nearly half of teams route queries\n\nCost optimisation as well as model selection have become standard.\n\n45% of teams now route queries across models, 23.7% on a router they trained & 21.5% on a proprietary one, while 54.7% send every query to a single model.\n\n## Cloudflare dominates sandboxes\n\nOf the 259 teams writing code with agents, 62% host their sandboxes on Cloudflare, three times the closest competitor. Then Other at 17%, Vercel at 17%, Modal at 16%, E2B at 12%, Daytona at 9% & Sail at 7%. The one control a builder cannot fake is concentrated in a single utility, & it is billed as compute rather than as security.\n\n## BI performs more than half of agent analysis\n\n56% of respondents use business intelligence tools to analyse the performance of their agents. The surprising statistic is not far behind : coding agents also perform some of the work, at 48%. Both systems are excellent at parsing agent behaviour. A roughly equivalent number use dedicated observability tools, at 41%, which does suggest a convergence of the category, at least for this one use case. Spreadsheets, that tardigrade<sup>[2](#fn:2)</sup> of enterprise software, continue to survive at 30%.\n\nThere is a lot more to unpack within the [full survey](https://theoryvc.com/surveys/ai-in-practice-2026), including open versus closed source model adoption, the rise of MCP despite doubts last year, & the still early adoption of evals. Overall, it is clear how quickly the ecosystem is evolving, & how much sophistication has permeated the enterprise, more quickly than any wave we have seen.\n\n1. \nTheory’s AI in Practice Survey 2026 fielded 455 senior technical builders on 22 September 2026, the second annual edition, written up by Lauren DeMeuse. The 2025 comparison is a different sample of 413, from the [2025 edition](https://theoryvc.com/blog-posts/ai-in-practice-survey) & its own[post](https://tomtunguz.com/ai-builders-survey-2025) . Percentages are rounded & multi-select questions sum above 100%, & where 2025 allowed one answer & 2026 allowed several, every 2026 share is lifted. The pain comparison holds each area’s place by average rather than its score, because 2025 asked for a ranking & 2026 asked for a 1-7 rating of each area, so context moving from first to fourth is a comparison of place, not of score. Q9 routing & Q12 sandbox hosting are new in 2026 & have no prior-year comparison ; Q12 was asked only of the 259 teams whose agents write & execute code. The 10% & 18% are shares of 455 builders, not dollars. Full data, all 27 questions :[theoryvc.com/surveys/ai-in-practice-2026](https://theoryvc.com/surveys/ai-in-practice-2026) . The published write-up :[AI in Practice Survey 2026](https://theoryvc.com/blog-posts/ai-in-practice-survey-2026) .[↩︎](#fnref:1)\n2. \nTardigrades are microscopic animals known for surviving extremes that kill almost everything else, including desiccation, radiation & the vacuum of space. The comparison casts the spreadsheet as the enterprise software equivalent : unglamorous, near-impossible to eliminate, & present in almost every environment, just like spreadsheets. See [Tardigrade](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tardigrade) .[↩︎](#fnref:2)", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/the-theory-2026-ai-survey-results", "canonical_source": "https://tomtunguz.com/ai-in-practice-survey-2026/", "published_at": "2026-10-13 15:00:00+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-10-14 23:51:55.650596+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "ai-agents", "ai-infrastructure", "mlops", "ai-safety"], "entities": ["Theory", "Cloudflare", "Vercel", "Modal", "E2B", "Daytona", "Lauren DeMeuse", "Sail"], "also_reported_by": [], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/the-theory-2026-ai-survey-results", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/the-theory-2026-ai-survey-results.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/the-theory-2026-ai-survey-results.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/the-theory-2026-ai-survey-results.jsonld"}}