As we say au revoir to 2025, let’s pull out our crystal balls—or just our educated guesses—on what 2026 has in store for mobility tech.

In the electrification and autonomy spaces, 2025 brought headwinds to the EV sector, including the loss of federal tax incentives, and significant acceleration in deployments of robotaxis. What might the new year bring?

Robotaxis go global: Paul Miller, VP and principal analyst at Forrester, predicted that 2026 will be the year that robotaxis expand beyond the US and China.

“[In] 2026, we will absolutely see Chinese robotaxis in the Middle East,” he told Tech Brew. “They’re already there now and beginning to move to commercial operation any day now. And then we will also see an increasing number of robotaxis operating in Europe, as well. Uber will be in London from next year. Wayve will be in London from next year.”

Indeed, this fall saw a slew of announcements related to planned robotaxi deployments in the Middle East and Europe, including Chinese AV tech company Pony AI’s partnership with automaker Stellantis to roll out robotaxis in Europe next year, Waymo’s planned launch of a ride-hailing service in London, Chinese company WeRide’s goal of deploying 1,000 robotaxis in the Middle East, and Baidu’s planned expansion from China to Dubai.

“What’s interesting is, most of the international expansion is Chinese hardware and Chinese cars with Uber or Lyft as the software platform,” Miller said. “So an interesting fusion of American software and Chinese hardware, which obviously we won’t see in the States.”

Keep reading here.—JG

Manhattan-sized data centers set to power AI social video fluff. Soaring valuations for startups with TBD products. If you’re looking for anecdotal signs of an AI bubble, there are plenty.

In fact, three out of three historians that we asked agree: The economy is indeed in the grips of a major bubble around this technology. We called up these experts to better understand how explosions of investor speculation around the Next Big Thing tend to play out—why they happen, how they burst, and what comes after.

“History suggests that it’s extremely likely that, yes, we are in an AI bubble right now,” David Sicilia, associate professor of economic history at the University of Maryland, told us.

Tech bubble ingredients: While the dot-com boom might be the most reached-for analogy to the current moment, the history of business and technology is sprinkled with these sorts of tech-fueled investor frenzies, from railways in the 1840s to radio in the 1920s.

“It’s not inevitable that bubbles are going to develop around just any old new technology,” Lee Vinsel, associate professor of tech and society at Virginia Tech, said. “What seems more inevitable is seeing bubbles develop around technologies that are dubbed in the public understanding as ‘transformative’ from the get-go.”

Keep reading here.—PK

If you want to know if a company is growing, maybe count their shared inboxes.

When Colin McCarthy started a support-engineering job for ad-services firm Essence in 2010, he said he was the first IT hire at the company—what was then one office and 60 people, he remembered. Over the next decade or so, the company grew to 22 offices, 3,000 people, and a few extra multi-user inboxes.

Shared inboxes like “support@” or “info@” allow multiple individuals to handle a group of topical messages. The setup also comes in handy when a person leaves a company and a replacement hire or a fellow team member needs to reference a “converted” mailbox to read previous messages.

But multiple inboxes, with multiple owners, can lead to a chaotic collection, especially when companies are expanding.

“It’s a byproduct of that rapid growth. You do get turnover. You do get a lot of new hires,” said McCarthy, now digital transformation director at Google partner and consulting firm Promevo. “As IT leaders, we need to have a good process for managing that access, and knowing who has access to that mailbox.”

IT Brew spoke with IT pros like McCarthy about how they handle a situation when there’s too much mail, too much sharing, and not enough caring.

Keep reading here.—BH