- Cybersecurity set to see largest budget increases in investment over the next 12 months.
- 2026 set to be the year firms see a return on their AI investments.
- Though concerns remain around barriers to scaling these investments.
With ongoing geopolitical tensions and recent high-profile cyber-attacks front of mind, cybersecurity emerged as the number one priority for large increases in investment over the next 12 months, according to the KPMG Global Tech Report 2026, which gains insight on priorities from tech executives across the world, including 151 in the UK.
More than half of UK organisations (57 per cent) reported they are planning on increasing their budget for cybersecurity by more than 10 per cent over the next 12 months. Globally, only 41 per cent are planning to increase their cybersecurity budget by the same amount, signalling greater emphasis on cybersecurity in the UK.
Meanwhile 46 per cent of respondents said they were planning on investing more than 10 per cent increase in budget on AI over the period. Data & analytics also saw a commitment to a big increase in investment over the next 12 months with 48 per cent of respondents reporting a budget increase of more than 10 per cent.
While cybersecurity is most likely to see the bigger investments, AI narrowly remains the area that most companies expect to increase their investment in. Five in six (84 per cent) respondents report some level of increase in AI investment over the next 12 months, with cybersecurity (83 per cent) and data and analytics (82 per cent) closely following.
The majority (91 per cent) of respondents agree that by the end of 2026 they expect AI to shift from an efficiency enabler to a revenue-driving innovation, signalling a shift away from initial applications and trials of the technology into seeing it deliver value and a return on investment.
Paul Henninger, Head of Technology and Data at KPMG UK, said: “AI may be dominating boardroom agendas, but our findings show UK organisations are putting real money behind cyber resilience—more than half are planning double-digit increases. That’s a sensible shift: with more than four in five expecting to raise investment in AI, cyber and data, the range of threats grow as fast as innovation. The message is clear: don’t buy cyber tools for the sake of it—start with your most critical assets, fix the basics, and assign clear accountability. The organisations that win will treat cyber as an enabler of growth, embedding security into cloud and AI from day one and turning budget into measurable operational resilience.”
Barriers to scaling up
While many organisations are expecting to scale up on key technologies over the next 12 months, they also report hitting barriers to doing so. When asked about AI, only 3 per cent of tech executives in the UK reported being fully scaled, however that number increased to 51 per cent when asked where they expect it to be in 12 months. Despite this optimism, 47 per cent said that while their strategy is funded and supported, they are hitting blocks to scaling up. It is a similar story for cybersecurity with 13 per cent saying they are fully scaled, with the number rising to 54 per cent in the next 12 months. However, 45 per cent report hitting blocks to scaling up their cybersecurity.
Henninger added: “Leaders are ambitious. Only a small minority say either AI or cybersecurity is fully scaled today, yet around half expect to be there within a year. That gap is the hard work of execution. Scaling isn’t a ‘bigger pilot’; it’s repeatable platforms, data foundations, architecture and an operating model that brings IT, security and the business together. We see programmes stall when organisations rush to deploy use cases without defining ownership, controls and how value will be measured. The organisations that succeed will industrialise delivery and build for scale from the start.”
AI adoption – the age of agentic AI
89 per cent of UK respondents said they are already investing in building agentic AI into their systems as they plan to move to a hybrid of human and digital workforce. As agentic AI becomes more prominent, tech executives are also thinking about what that means for skills within their workforce. 92 per cent agreed that managing AI agents will become an important skill within the next five years. Nine in 10 (90 per cent) also agreed that their hiring plans includes specialist AI roles such as prompt engineers, AI ethicists and machine learning operations specialists.
With the increase in AI adoption, organisations are not only thinking about the efficiencies and benefits this can bring but 93 per cent also agreed that their IT, security and risk teams are collaborating to ensure that the AI systems and use cases are deployed securely and that they are continuously monitored for cyber risks.
Henninger commented: “Agentic AI marks a shift from tools that answer questions to systems that take action. It’s no surprise that so many organisations are already investing at pace, but the real differentiator will be governance and talent. When AI agents can trigger workflows, access data and interact with customers, you need clear guardrails—identity and access controls, audit trails, human oversight and continuous monitoring for cyber and other risks. Pair that with targeted hiring and broad upskilling, and you can unlock the productivity and return on investment without compromising reliability or trust at scale.”