2026 Top 10 Disruptive Tech Trends

Corum has a unique vantage point on Tech M&A, with a broader view of the market than anyone. We have thousands of interactions with technology companies through our educational conferences, the extensive research we do for our clients and tens of thousands of conversations with buyers—it’s a breadth that’s unparalleled. Obviously, that’s an advantage we put to work for our clients, but that we also utilize each year to develop our annual list of the Top 10 Disruptive Trends that we see driving Tech M&A.

We take all those discussions and research and insights, then synthesize it into the leading list of its kind every year, so whether you’re a tech company CEO considering M&A or a buyer seeking to make acquisitions, you’ll want to pay attention, because these are the key trends shaping your environment.

Tech M&A is uniquely driven by disruption, because disruption is what creates strategic imperative for buyers—properly positioning your company in relation to this disruption is critical to understanding and getting the true value of your company. Well positioned companies get sold. So, let’s take a look at our Top Ten Disruptive Trends for 2026.

Our “Foundational” trends are those that are changing things at a core level of society, technology, the economy etc.: Agentic Enablement, People Centric Productivity, Actionable Analytics, Value Chain Intelligence and Digital Trust. Then there are the “functional” trends, which describe how disruption is playing out in specific markets and technologies: Focused Managed Services, Healthtech Continuum, Embedded Cashflow, Blue Collar Software and the Digitized Environment.

Agentic Enablement is the latest evolution of the trend that’s been dominating the headlines for years now. While the latest AI technology is creating a range of useful solutions, agentic technology is rising to the top as a key priority. Today’s models allow the automation of increasingly complex workflows and agentic solutions that meet rising customer expectations are in high buyer demand. Sectors like marketing, dev tools, healthcare, supply chain and cybersecurity were first to see impact, but that kind of M&A demand is hitting every market.

Agentic-enabled technology is one side of this, but agentic-enabling tech is the other. This can be at the data layer, where access to proprietary, high-quality datasets and datastreams are key. It can be at the software layer, filling emerging gaps in the ecosystem across quality assurance, compliance, orchestration, training and more. Or, it can be at the infrastructure layer, addressing (or benefiting from) how the high computing, memory and power needs of agentic AI are changing overall market demand.

People Centric Productivity is entering a new era, but still one that rewards HRtech companies that enable companies attract, hire, retain and engage employees. Even as the employment market remains in flux, the silver tsunami is rolling along and hitting a range of sectors, and the active HRtech M&A market over the last few years has culminated in a surge of megadeals, including the $11 billion dollar take-private of Dayforce by Thoma Bravo and the $4 billion dollar acquisition of Paycor by Paychex. But it’s not just high-dollar consolidation, as overall deal volume in 2025 also jumped up to the highest level since 2022—as larger deal flow drives smaller deal flow for tuck-ins across the sector.

Within the broader trend, we see strong buyer demand for solutions that enable higher quality worker training, such as the AR/VR solutions for the US military created by Corum client Envision Innovative Solutions, acquired by PD Systems. Automation solutions that drive efficiency, such as Corum client CDP Communications’ automation of document accessibility processes, are also in demand from buyers like Quadient, which acquired CDP. Compliance solutions that lessen the generally increasing regulatory burden on employers can also benefit from this trend.

Actionable Analytics remains a key trend, as technology that leverages analytics into prescriptive insights can be an attractive target as a strategic acquisition or tuck-in, or as a platform itself. Enabling faster, better decision-making is a significant value-add to any software platform, which drives interest in analytic tools like decision support, predictive maintenance, benchmarking or pricing—especially within vertical markets, making use of proprietary data access. At Corum we sold SaaS company Arkstone to Archimed for its clinical decision support tools to help healthcare providers generate optimal disease treatment plans. Similarly, ProAxion, which we sold to Decide4Action, provides wireless predictive maintenance solutions that provide real-time insights into equipment health for manufacturers and others.

Other companies that should consider taking advantage of this trend are those with access to powerful, unique sources of data that can be put to use for actionable insights, as well as tools and services that can manage and prepare such data to be AI-ready. Finally, outside of software, data science and other services teams that can address these opportunities can also see demand.

The Value Chain Intelligence trend encompasses technology that identifies the missing signal in the noise of disparate, siloed or even seemingly unconnected data. As data is lost when processes move from one step, department or partner to another, software that keeps that data intact from step to step, or aggregates scattered data, enabling deeper insights and a broader view of the relevant environment, is in high demand. This is particularly true as AI and automation create new data fidelity risks—even as they improve efficiency, such solutions often require new layers of data confirmation and approval.

One of the ways this drives M&A is when deals bring together disparate parts of a single ecosystem, enabling better visibility across the value chain. Corum’s client ImplantBase, acquired by Surgimate, is a great example here—ImplantBase is the leading provider of inventory solutions for orthopedic implant manufacturers & distributors, while Surgimate serves the surgery teams globally that need those implants. Combining both the supply and demand data into a unified platform enables superior service to both sides. These kinds of synergies can be found across sectors and technologies.

Establishing Digital Trust has emerged as a core need across a range of acquirers. With hackers and scammers now armed with generative AI, and with global networks of bad actors having turned cyberfraud into a well-organized $4 trillion dollar industry, tools to establish and authenticate identity are more vital than ever. Every form of hacking and fraud has been AI-enhanced, and with deepfaked audio and video in the mix, many of our usual, common sense defenses aren’t enough.

This drives buyer demand across a range of technology sectors, most notably cybersecurity, where M&A hit a deal volume record in 2025, outpacing even the flurry of activity in 2021 that came as everything moved remote during COVID. Deal value spiked as well, driven by megadeals like Palo Alto Network’s acquisition of Cyberark for nearly $25B, and Google’s $32B acquisition of Wiz. Other areas are seeing impacts, like compliance, anti-fraud and identity and access management in its various forms—in person, online, mobile and beyond. Much of this is about fighting fire with fire, tools that leverage AI to proactively detect and prevent threats and fraud. Innovative identity solutions, like behavioral biometrics, AI-enabled counterfeit detection, continuous authentication and distributed identity frameworks all have a part to play here.

Focused Managed Services continues to be the way to think about buyer demand for services companies. Acquirers want predictable revenue streams, preferably truly recurring, and they also want the deep, specific domain knowledge, that makes those customer relationships as sticky as possible. This is true for IT services—systems integrators, consulting, MSPs, software developers and more—but also tech-enabled services more broadly. This can be a focus by sector or customer type, problem set, or technology ecosystem. For example, we sold D4M International to Jade Global, which sought D4M’s expertise in bringing SAP Hana & Digital Supply Chain expertise into manufacturers globally. We also sold IBM Maximo partner Certus Digital, out of New Zealand, to Egis, in France, and wireless services specialist Vialterna out of Mexico to Ascenda Capital, showing just how robust the global market is for companies with the right combination.

The Healthtech Continuum trend is similar in that it helps describe the way buyers broadly approach companies selling into healthcare providers, payers and other ecosystem participants. M&A here also hit a record in 2025, leaping up 40% across both value and volume over past few years. This is despite the fact that healthtech remains in many areas dominated by massive players like Epic and the former Cerner—and it’s this continuum concept that drives these deals. Across the continuum of patient care, the continuum of treatment development and even the continuum of health system operations, there are nearly infinite points where specialized software and technology solutions can improve outcomes and create value. Add to this the disruption from many of our Foundational trends happening all across those continuums and you get this very active deal environment. We discussed our ImplantBase/Surgimate deal which is a great example of one of these points, specifically in orthopedic surgery, as well as our Arkstone/Archimed deal, targeting questions of infectious disease and antimicrobial resistance. We’ve also done deals in rehabilitation care, community health and sanitation compliance—and compliance in particular looms large here, because as new technologies like AI are put in place, the regulatory guardrails generally require additional tech themselves.

The Embedded Cashflow trend creates opportunities for both fintech and software, and comes in two parts. On the one hand, there’s a rise in embedded finance, where financial services that actively move money around embedded directly into a software solution. On the other hand, embedded fintech is when such financial technology itself is embedded in more traditional financial services companies. Both emerging models create significant demand for software companies that enable and benefit from the movement of money.

This drives buyer interest in a range of companies serving financial services, optimizing and enabling transactions from invoicing to interchange collections. On that note, Corum client Comtech Systems made the Collect! software platform for collection agencies, banks and others to optimize those collection processes, and was acquired by Recur Software. Farther up the stack, we sold Payment Components to payments giant ACI Worldwide to roll its innovative account-to-account payment, open banking API management and financial messaging technologies into its end-to-end payments orchestration platform. These sorts of fintech and software serving financial services companies are the biggest beneficiaries of this trend, but within broader B2B software, solutions for the office of the CFO are seeing a similar boost, as are systems of record that facilitate payments and can benefit from buyer fintech.

The Blue Collar Software trend is another that has had legs. The impact of all previously mentioned trends roll into the digital transformation of many blue collar roles and industries, with data and insight pushed out to frontline workers, then back into centralized ERP and other core system from those workers, enabling automation, efficiency, safety, compliance and better decision-making at all levels. Vertically targeted SaaS solutions serving blue collar industries have a substantial acquirer base, including both strategic players but also a wide range of financial buyers specifically mandated to find companies that leverage purpose-built software into highly stable customer relationships and predictable revenue. This is true in the broadest blue collar industries like natural resources, construction and manufacturing, and in particular within narrow niches where many buyers are happy to find companies a small TAM, total addressable market, as long as it comes with the high retention enabled by a good understanding of that market.

Finally, Digitized Environment is a companion to the prior trend, but with digital transformation coming to the physical world in new way that leverage AI, sensors, edge computing, modeling and sometimes just good old-fashioned software. One aspect of the trend is the digitized modeling, analysis and management of physical spaces, such as the Computer-Aided Facilities Management tools provided by ACAD Plus, a which Corum sold to the Addnode Group, or the vehicle tracking solutions provided to public transport, schools and transportation companies by uTrack, which we sold to Ridango Group.

These sorts of software-only tools are in the highest demand and benefit from many of the same vertical market software dynamics just addressed. Deals with hardware components can be more complex, but we’re seeing a growing number of buyers who are willing, and even eager, for innovative sensor, control, robotic and similar hardware tech, especially as it can help cement customer relationships and improve retention. Owning the physical location of the intersection of the digital and physical world is attractive, and companies with that sort of footprint, or who can help larger companies expand their own physical footprint, can see exciting opportunities in today’s M&A environment. This is true across a range of industries—in the healthcare space, Corum sold Intelligent Observation to HID for its solution that helps health care facilities track hand sanitization; we also sold Frog Parking, a provider of sensors, signage and software for parking facilities, to Towne Park, creating an end-to-end solution of services and technology. We’ve also talked about deals in the Enterprise Asset management space, predictive maintenance—all of these benefit from this trend.

Those are the disruptive trends for 2026—if you heard anything that sounds like your company in there, then I strongly encourage you to calibrate the M&A market while buyer demand remains strong.