The Next Era of Global Growth: Semafor World Economy 2026 Principal (Direct Reg)

After navigating a year of rapid change and high uncertainty around tariffs and trade dynamics, CEOs are increasingly shifting their focus to opportunities for growth – M&A, innovation, and, of course, AI.

CEOs are recognizing that AI is more than a technology. It opens the door to a fundamentally different way of running organizations – touching strategy, operations, culture, risk, and talent. Sixty-five percent of CEOs say accelerating AI is one of their top three priorities, a prime way to improve both growth and productivity.

On the M&A front, signs point to 2026 as a potentially dynamic year for global deal making. Improving sentiment in key regions and sectors and stabilizing macroeconomic and financial conditions create fertile ground for renewed activity, though regulatory conditions in some markets remain fluid.

While tariffs and geopolitical shifts remain on the agenda, companies are changing their posture from reactive to proactive in order to achieve competitive advantage, looking to different countries and, increasingly, regional blocs, as powerful engines for growth.

Growth — and the way investors think about it — looks more uncertain than ever. Geopolitical conflicts, whether it is the war in Iran or the US’ blunt wielding of tariffs, have made planning for the next quarter, let alone the next five years, difficult. Companies are increasingly choosing to husband cash and hunker down, while trying to either attach themselves to the AI hysteria or, if they’re at the forefront of the revolution, find a way to manage investor expectations. AI promises to turbocharge productivity, but CEOs find themselves having to balance the needs and worries of their still-human workforces with the very real cost savings that AI could bring them.

On the M&A front, tighter is now better. CEOs and boards have been spinning off businesses and slimming them down — whether as standalone public companies or through sales to private equity firms — as investors demand simplicity and cleanliness, not the muddy synergies that were in vogue just 15 years ago. AI, which is turning even the most patient of investors towards a risk-off mentality, has only accelerated that trend. Tech mega-deals, beyond acquihires, have yet to materialize. The colossal deals we have seen are in decidedly old-world industries that are betting it’s now or never for scale.

A laissez-faire antitrust regime and a president who has repeatedly signaled that America is open for business should mean that bankers’ long-awaited M&A boom materializes. But with AI making value impossible to forecast and unrest continuing to make dealmaking difficult, CEOs seem far more poised to wait-and-see for a bit longer.

The job for CEOs and business leaders in 2026 can be summarized as needing to “thrive in an era of disruption.” Businesses now face a very different tariff regime globally than they did 18 months ago. That change, combined with rising geopolitical tension, an energy shock, and the continuing massive surge in AI investments, means that CEOs need to navigate an even broader set of variables to achieve growth in the years ahead.

On tariffs and trade, leading organizations now understand that these changes haven’t caused global trade to collapse, but reorganize. Companies are building structural resilience in order to respond quickly with disciplined, fact-based planning and greater geopolitical muscle.

On geopolitical tension and the latest energy shock, we are facing a new global energy reality. The scale of disruption is genuinely unprecedented. The International Energy Agency (IEA) has compared what is happening now to the 1973 oil shocks and the 2022 European gas crisis — combined. The Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly 20% of global oil and Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) flow, is effectively closed. Brent crude surged from $72 to more than $100 per barrel in under a month. The shakeup could very well push a long-term structural shift in how the world thinks about energy.

On AI, CEOs are recognizing that AI is more than a technology; it opens the door to a fundamentally different way of running organizations. Sixty-five percent of CEOs say accelerating AI is one of their top priorities, a prime way to improve growth and productivity. In my conversations with CEOs, I see a clear shift: leaders are making a small number of focused investments to drive growth.

CEOs and leaders need to continuously push themselves and their organizations to resist the urge to hunker down and instead explore the opportunities brought by these disruptions.