What 2025 Taught Us and How We’ll Scale AI Impact in 2026

This year marked an important moment for ADC, one of consolidation, integration and renewed clarity of purpose. Following the acquisitions of acmetric and CleverFranke, we not only unified operations but, more importantly, brought together diverse cultures, ambitions and crafts into a single multidisciplinary team of decision scientists, AI engineers, developers, strategists and designers. Our consistently high client NPS scores (70), together with the strength of our long-standing and continuing client relationships, underline the confidence organisations place in our expertise and the impact we deliver. We have also expanded our international footprint and at times used our growing expertise to support the development of responsible data and AI policy, including advisory work for Dutch political parties and presentations at the European Parliament.

Our progress is driven by deep craftsmanship and a relentless focus on tangible results. In a landscape crowded with rushed and superficial AI offerings, ADC stands apart by integrating deep industry expertise, statistical and engineering rigour and strategic insight to help organisations transform in a responsible and meaningful way.

Looking to 2026, the key theme will be achieving real value from AI. Beyond early hype, genuine transformation will depend on expertise, bold vision and grounded realism.

What AI trends stood out most in the Netherlands this year and how did AI adoption and demand accelerate or shift? 

From a Dutch perspective, 2025 was the year AI really moved from “interesting use cases” to reshaping how companies might operate. The conversation shifted from experiments to tangible cost savings and clear business outcomes, and many organisations are now asking how AI can structurally change their operating model rather than just automate a few tasks. Model quality has already surpassed what most day-to-day use cases need, and we see a rich ecosystem of platforms and frameworks emerging that let teams build higher up the stack with better governance built in.

Which industry sectors show the most promise or disruption? 

Across sectors, three waves of adoption stood out:

1. The first was in customer care: making large knowledge bases conversational, supporting agents in real time, mining historic conversations for insights, and automating simple requests like password resets or order tracking.
2. The second is playing out in document-heavy domains such as banking and insurance, where AI helps process complex files at scale and surface better insights while making life easier for customers.
3. The third wave focuses on smarter, more personalised customer communication. Rather than bombarding users with every possible email or notification, companies are starting to ask which messages are truly worth sending given relevance, impact, and fatigue.

What challenges or opportunities are unique to the Dutch market? 

The Dutch market is determined to adopt AI quickly, but in a controlled way. Large players are investing heavily in governance and risk frameworks, helped by the fact that most non-digital natives have now moved from on-prem to the cloud and can leverage mature AI tooling. The biggest challenges are on the people side: choosing use cases that deliver real ROI beyond MVPs, and enabling existing teams to embrace the technology, give feedback, and co-create solutions. Compared with the US, spending is still more cautious, with a stronger focus on near-term returns.

What are your predictions or trends in AI you see coming in 2026? 

Looking ahead to 2026, we expect continued exponential improvement and sharply falling marginal costs. Use cases that were too hard or too expensive a few months ago may suddenly become viable. Companies that invest now in the right platforms, frameworks, governance, and organisational design to adopt AI quickly will pull away from those that stay in permanent pilot mode.

What AI trends stood out most in the Nordics this year and how did AI adoption and demand accelerate or shift?  

Executives in the Nordics shifted in 2025 from “having an AI strategy” to demanding tangible, production‑grade outcomes. Many already had roadmaps, but the focus moved from pilots and experiments to scaling use cases that deliver real business value. Across our clients, maturity levels still varied. For more advanced organisations (“AI first movers”), the main challenge was no longer ideation, but moving from pilot to production and driving impact across the business: changing processes, managing adoption, and building the right operating model around AI. 2025 was also the year of many “second movers”: organisations that were less mature on AI but finally set up their own strategies. They learned from first movers’ experience with “AI for the sake of AI” and avoided initiatives not clearly linked to value. The key lesson across maturity levels is clear: strategy and pilots only go so far without solid, AI‑ready data foundations.

Which industry sectors show the most promise or disruption? 

The Life Science sector is a clear frontrunner: AI is now embedded in innovation scouting, R&D efficiency improvements, commercial and market-access planning (for example, advanced demand forecasting in specific therapy areas). Rising R&D and clinical trial costs are pushing pharma and biotech companies to explore AI more aggressively, even though many processes remain heavily regulated and still require a human in the loop. In biosolutions, messy, unstructured external data and a still loosely defined industry boundary make AI both a challenge and a differentiator, requiring deep domain expertise combined with advanced modelling skills. At the same time, biosolutions attracted growing strategic and policy interest, where we at ADC contributed with economic analysis and insights into the sector’s potential impact. 

What challenges or opportunities are unique to the Nordics market? 

A central tension for Nordic organisations is how to stay innovative on AI while operating under strong cost-pressure and efficiency demands. Most organisations now “know” AI conceptually, but the differentiator is the ability to integrate external data systematically and safely into core processes. Mixed signals from global leaders, such as large swings in outlook and investment from major Nordic players, have created uncertainty but also sharpened the focus on resilient, data-driven business models. For the Nordics, the opportunity lies in combining strong digital infrastructure, trust-based governance models, and sustainability ambitions with advanced AI and data capabilities. 

What are your predictions or trends in AI you see coming in 2026? 

AI will remain a priority on boardroom agendas, with more emphasis on moving from POC experimentation to production ready Agents. Key is to build solutions that are reliable, and repeatable with capabilities embedded in everyday workflows. Governance, security, and interpretability will become non-negotiable: organisations will invest in clear guardrails, robust infrastructure, and transparent models to earn and maintain trust. The “ease of” utilising external data will be a defining theme: those who can frictionlessly tap, combine, and interpret external signals in near real time will gain a strategic advantage in increasingly competitive and cost pressured markets. 

Across markets, a clear pattern emerges: AI is no longer about experimentation, but about building the foundations, operating models, and governance needed to turn proven ideas into scalable impact. Organisations are converging on the same lesson: strategy slides and pilots are not enough. What matters now is clean, well‑governed data, robust platforms, and teams who can co‑create AI solutions that are safe, reliable, and embedded in everyday work. ADC is preparing for 2026 by doubling down on this reality. That means combining deep sector expertise with statistical and engineering rigour, strengthening our capabilities in agents, RAG, and domain‑specific solutions, and continuing to support responsible AI policy and governance. For clients and partners, the message is simple: this is the moment to move beyond “playing with AI” and design for scale. The organisations that invest now in the right foundations, guardrails, and ways of working will not only capture near‑term value, but also be best placed to shape how AI transforms their industry in the years ahead.

Whether you are setting the direction for AI or scaling solutions in production, we partner with you as one team—from strategy through to delivery—to build AI that delivers in the real world. Get in touch with our experts to discuss your AI ambitions and next steps.