Five Tech Predictions for 2026 — And Why Two of Them Are Already Wrong

I read Joe Guszkowski’s five-tech-predictions piece over coffee this morning, did the thing where you nod three times and frown twice, and then spent the rest of the morning trying to figure out which of the five he’d called and which he’d whiffed. The answer, mostly, is that he’s right about the macro and wrong about the cocktail-party version of it. That distinction matters more than it sounds.

The contrarian read: Guszkowski’s predictions are useful as a barometer of where the conventional wisdom has settled, not as a forecast. Two of them — the Thoma Bravo roll-up continuing, agentic AI eclipsing generative — are calls on trends so far along that they’re closer to observations. Two more — an OpenAI Instant Checkout restaurant deal, a delivery-robot setback — are honest 50/50s. The fifth, “a restaurant brand launches a podcast,” is the tell. It’s the prediction you make when you’ve used up your other four.

The two he’s right about, and why “right” is doing a lot of work

The Thoma Bravo roll-up call is the safest one on the list, because Restaurant Business documented in November that restaurant tech’s buying spree is just getting started. Olo went private in August. PAR keeps stitching. The PE thesis on this category is locked in: recurring revenue, sticky customers, fragmented vendors, lots of room to consolidate. Calling more of that in 2026 is like calling more rain in November. It’s the right answer; it’s not exactly a prediction. The May roundup will revisit how the consolidation curve actually bent through Q1 and Q2.

Agentic AI eclipsing generative is the other safe one, and for the same reason — every POS vendor’s roadmap deck I’ve seen this fall has already made that pivot. The word “agentic” has done a full lap from buzzword to cliché in eight months. Guszkowski is calling a thing that’s already happening. Fair enough. But the operator question isn’t “will agentic eclipse generative.” It’s “which of my vendors’ agents will I actually let approve a price change, and which will I keep on a leash?” That’s a 2026 question; this prediction isn’t.

The OpenAI Instant Checkout call — with Wingstop floated as a likely candidate — is the most interesting one on the list, because it’s the one where Guszkowski is actually exposed to being wrong. If OpenAI lands a marquee restaurant Instant Checkout deal in 2026, he’ll get credit. If they don’t, or if the deal that lands is with a brand nobody outside the QSR press has heard of, he won’t. I’d take the over on some deal happening — the commerce layer in chat is too obvious to ignore, and a forthcoming May Pass piece on DoorDash’s commerce moves will sketch why the platforms are racing each other into this lane. Whether it’s Wingstop specifically is a coin flip.

The podcast prediction is the tell

The fifth one — “a restaurant brand launches a podcast” — is where I’d push back. Not because it’s wrong (a brand will absolutely launch a podcast in 2026; several will), but because it’s the kind of prediction that costs nothing to make and pays out on almost any outcome. Wingstop already has one. Sweetgreen and Shake Shack have flirted with the format. If the bar is “one restaurant brand launches one podcast in twelve months,” that bar is on the floor.

Mark this as a category problem, not a Guszkowski problem. The prediction-industrial complex runs on lists like this one, and the lists run on a mix of safe macro calls and one or two filler items that pad the count to five. Operators reading these pieces should weight them accordingly: the macro calls are useful as a temperature read, the safe ones are confirmation of what you already see in your vendor decks, and the filler items are the writer telling you they ran out of real ones.

The delivery-robot setback is the honest one. Guszkowski isn’t saying which robot, which operator, or which setback — he’s calling a vibe shift. He’s probably right. The economics on sidewalk delivery still don’t pencil for most use cases, and the public perception cycle on autonomous-anything is overdue for a backlash. But this is the prediction that, if it comes true, will get written up as a trend; if it doesn’t, will get forgotten.

The piece is worth reading. It’s a useful artifact of where the trade press’s center of gravity sits going into 2026. Just don’t read it as a forecast. Read it as a snapshot of what’s already obvious — and notice which prediction the writer reached for when the obvious ones ran out.

— Maya covers restaurant tech for TableTransfers. Tips: [email protected].