The 2026 State of AI for Business Report surveyed more than 2,100 professionals, 84% of whom work at B2B organizations and about a third of whom are marketers. This makes this one of the most relevant datasets for B2B professionals trying to understand where AI is taking their profession.
Here are five key takeaways from the report that B2B marketers should pay attention to and plan to address now.
1. Nearly 3 in 4 professionals expect AI to eliminate more jobs than it creates in the next three years.
Seventy-one percent of survey respondents expect job disruption from AI soon. This figure jumped 18 percentage points (from 53%) in a single year. Among marketers specifically, that figure rose from 53% to 70%.
The twist: only 20% of professionals surveyed are concerned about their own job.
“Seventy-one percent expect AI to cut jobs across the economy, but 20% think it might actually happen to them,” SmarterX Director of Research Taylor Radey says.
SmarterX and Marketing AI Institute founder and CEO Paul Roetzer said: “If you know you’re the one bringing 5x, 10x value, then you’re feeling pretty good about the future.”
What it means for you: The AI-forward professional is insulated. The one waiting to engage is not. The gap between those two is widening fast.
2. Nearly three-quarters (74%) say AI is critically or very important to their organization’s success in the next 12 months.
Among CEOs and founders, that number hits 89%. This shows that AI isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s a business priority.
What it means for you: If you’re still framing AI internally as “something to explore,” you need to get going now.
3. More than half of professionals still don’t have access to formal AI training.
Training availability improved — 46% of organizations now offer it, up from 32% last year. But the majority of the workforce remains untrained. And the training might not be aligned with where professionals need help: people want to learn workflow integration (58%), AI agents (51%), and no-code tools (45%). Only 15% want prompting tips.
What it means for you: If your org is still running intro-level AI workshops, your training is outdated. It’s time to advance.
4. Only 13% of organizations have all four governance foundations in place.
An AI roadmap. An AI council. Generative AI policies. An AI ethics policy. Roughly one in eight organizations has all four — and 32% have none. Yet among organizations with AI governance in place, 50% describe their AI momentum as accelerating.
What it means for you: Governance isn’t bureaucracy. It’s the infrastructure that makes scale possible. If your marketing team is building AI workflows without policy backing, you’re not building on a clear, strong foundation.
5. There is strong interest in AI agents and agentic AI
Forty percent of professionals say they are most closely following AI agents and agentic AI. No other trend comes close. And 51% say agent training is one of their top requests. As Radey put it, systems thinking is becoming a core competency.
“The idea of being able to be a systems thinker is very helpful, especially when you start thinking about rebuilding workflows and working with agents,” she said.
What it means for you: The next wave of AI that acts autonomously on your behalf is here. B2B marketers who understand how to design, oversee, and govern agent-driven workflows will have a significant advantage.
Taylor Radey will present “What AI-Forward Marketers Are Learning About the Future of Work” at the AI for B2B Marketers Summit. To find out more and register, visit https://www.marketingaiinstitute.com/events/ai-for-b2b-marketers-summit
