As we head into 2026, long‑standing business models—once reliable frameworks for profit, customer capture and market leadership—are rapidly unraveling under pressure from artificial intelligence, autonomous agents, shifting consumer behavior, and new economic incentives.
According to PYMNTS, the increasing prevalence of AI agents that act on behalf of consumers and enterprises is reshaping how value is captured and who gets to benefit from it. In this Prompt Economy, AI agents can hunt and redirect margins traditionally held by incumbents, forcing businesses to rethink where opportunities truly lie.
At the heart of this shift is a fundamental reallocation of economic opportunity.
What was previously “your margin is my opportunity”—a phrase popularized by Jeff Bezos to describe Amazon’s strategy of leveraging scale and technology to erode competitors’ margins—is evolving. Instead of platforms alone turning other companies’ margins into their own growth engines, AI agents empowered by consumer preferences are becoming the new arbiters of margin assignment.
Those agents optimize for net value, transparency, convenience, and price, and increasingly challenge legacy pricing, loyalty, and transaction models.
This trend is far from isolated. Broader business research indicates that organizations must transition from rigid legacy models to intelligence‑driven, adaptive frameworks.
The World Economic Forum highlights that exploiting the full potential of AI requires dismantling siloed decision‑making, reconfiguring data architectures, and embedding AI as a strategic capability across the enterprise—not merely as a tool.
Businesses clinging to outdated structures risk falling behind more agile competitors that embrace data‑integration, collaboration, and technology‑enabled decision‑making.
The forces breaking legacy models are multi‑faceted:
- Technological disruption: Generative AI and autonomous systems are enabling new value networks, altering how customers research, transact, and repeat business—often outside traditional brand or platform boundaries.
- Consumer empowerment: Smart agents increasingly negotiate on behalf of end users, prioritizing value and experience over brand loyalty or traditional referral systems.
- Ecosystem complexity: As digital and physical value chains interweave, companies must compete within broader ecosystems rather than in isolated market silos.
Execution excellence and agility are becoming the true differentiators.
Organizations that proactively redesign their business models—aligning around customer‑centric intelligence and continuous innovation—will be best positioned to thrive in 2026’s dynamic environment. Embracing change isn’t just strategic—it’s existential.
More about business models:
Ashton York
Dan Craft
Nathan Sellars
