Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo 2026 Barcelona: Day 3 Highlights

We are bringing you news and highlights from Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo, taking place this week in Barcelona, Spain. Below is a collection of the key announcements and insights coming out of the conference. You can read the highlights here from Day 1 and Day 2.

On Day 3, we are announcing the top strategic tech trends for 2027, revealing the top predictions for 2027, and examining how CIOs can respond to AI sovereignty challenges. Be sure to check this page throughout the day for updates.

Presented by Daryl Plummer, Distinguished VP Analyst and Gartner Fellow

As AI reshapes the systems we rely on, successful organizations will balance innovation with responsibility to manage both the opportunities and unintended consequences of an AI-driven world. In this session, Daryl Plummer, Distinguished VP Analyst and Gartner Fellow, unveiled the top strategic predictions of the future that represent opportunities or threats.   

• By 2029, 60% of organizations deploying AI will establish a dedicated function responsible for mapping AI total cost to value or profit. “Organizations should link token usage directly to business value metrics, while implementing clear governance, quotas and monitoring controls to ensure AI investments deliver measurable returns.”
• By 2029, 80% of new applications will be intentionally disposable – used for less than one year – revolutionizing the software lifecycle. “AI is making application development so accessible that employees will increasingly create temporary applications to meet short-term business needs.”
• By 2030, 80% of front-line workers employed by international companies will be assisted by physical AI systems. “Technologies such as robots, drones, autonomous vehicles and other embodied systems will sense, interact with and influence their surroundings.”
• By 2030, 80 percent of organizations with public-facing AI will have experienced a cost exhaustion attack creating excessive AI cost. “Make AI token costs a cybersecurity indicator, implement cost-focused security controls, and extend monitoring capabilities across all AI technologies.” 
• By 2030, $10 trillion in enterprise-owned energy will make Global 2000 firms unexpected power providers – selling to grids and AI data centers, reshaping the utility industry. “As energy becomes a strategic, software-defined asset, organizations will need new capabilities to optimize production, storage and consumption.”

Journalists can receive additional information and/or request an interview with Daryl Plummer by contacting Laurence Goasduff at laurence.goasduff@gartner.com.

Presented by Tori Paulman, Distinguished VP Analyst, Gartner

Technological breakthroughs are accelerating like never before. In this session, Tori Paulman, VP Analyst at Gartner, highlighted the game-changing technologies every CIO should know to face the future with confidence and agility. 

• “CIOs need to safely lead their organizations into the autonomous era. To do so they must leverage the Non-Textual AI Frontier, govern the Autonomous Agent Platform, and architect Durable Agility. Gartner’s top technology trends for 2027 will help CIOs build the strategic boundaries needed to deliver trusted outcomes.”

• World Models: “World models establish a physics-first paradigm shift that allows machines to comprehend space, time and causality, enabling autonomous agents to simulate potential future states, predict outcomes and understand the consequences of their actions before execution.”

• AI Agent Identity: “By 2028, 25% of enterprise security breaches will trace back to AI agent abuse due to unmanaged machine privileges and legacy credential practices.Applying dynamic identity controls allows organizations to replace high-risk static credentials with dynamic, policy-controlled access.”

• Sovereign Tech: “Sovereign tech (SovTech) refers to hardware, software, databases and AI models designed to provide realistic exit strategies from critical providers while remaining perpetually available to prevent lock-in and ensure complete operational continuity.”

Journalists can receive additional information and/or request an interview with Tori Paulman by contacting Laurence Goasduff at laurence.goasduff@gartner.com.

Presented by Bettina Tratz-Ryan, VP Analyst, Gartner 

AI sovereignty is reshaping AI implementation strategies. In this session, Bettina Tratz-Ryan, VP Analyst at Gartner, examined the AI values, risks, and external dependencies associated with AI sovereignty.

• “Intelligence is at stake for governments and public sector when AI becomes critical infrastructure and therefore a national resilience issue.”  

• “Over the years, the technology trade-off was familiar: faster, cheaper, or better. In the age of AI and sovereignty, CIOs are now expected to build strategic autonomy. This is the AI sovereignty trilemma.”

• “The AI sovereignty trilemma is ultimately a question of net value: which dependencies are worth accepting, and which costs are worth absorbing?”

• “On one side of the equation are the costs of dependency. On the other side is the cost of control.”

• “To mitigate the AI sovereignty trilemma, CIOs need to move from initial trade-off discussions to a comparable measure of the net value that AI sovereignty measures will create.”

Journalists can receive additional information and/or request an interview with Bettina Tratz-Ryan by contacting Laurence Goasduff at laurence.goasduff@gartner.com.