We are pleased to welcome back Duncan Stewart, Director of TMT Research at Deloitte Canada, for Pender Ventures’ annual Technology, Media, and Telecommunications (TMT) update. Hosted by Maria Pacella, Managing Partner at Pender Ventures, this wide-ranging conversation explores Deloitte’s 2026 TMT Predictions and what they mean for investors, operators, and policymakers. Duncan shares insights on AI-driven economic growth, data center infrastructure, agentic AI, robotics, energy constraints, and the narrowing gap between AI promise and reality.
02:40
From “software is eating the world” to “TMT is eating the world”: technology now represents over half of the S&P 500 market cap.
04:42
AI data centers as a primary driver of GDP growth: infrastructure boom or bubble?
07:14
Why GenAI embedded in search and existing applications will overtake standalone AI tools.
09:00
What this shift means for AI startups and the opportunity for specialized, high-value use cases.
10:56
Why AI inference will dominate compute, and why it will remain power-hungry and centralized.
13:40
Speed to power: electricity availability as a key bottleneck for data center expansion.
15:46
Agentic AI adoption: why many projects will fail and how orchestration unlocks value.
18:05
The future of work: how agentic AI reshapes roles without eliminating jobs.
20:13
Robotics outlook: slow growth today, smarter robots tomorrow, and implications for healthcare.
26:08
The AI hype cycle matures: progress driven by data hygiene, integration, and governance.
27:53
Where AI is delivering real enterprise value today and which sectors are adopting fastest.
32:55
Second-order effects of the AI and data center boom: power pricing, regulation, and systemic risk.
35:03
Data sovereignty and security: the rapid rise of sovereign and hybrid cloud strategies.
