Six top women who are leading some of the biggest tech companies in the world detail how AI and targeted infrastructure investments will shape the year ahead, with a clear message to partners: Focus on outcome‑driven solutions, recurring services, and AI‑powered platforms to win bigger deals.
Across security, networking, observability, and data infrastructure, the message to channel partners is clear: success in 2026 will come from selling outcomes, not products. The tech industry’s top leaders are emphasize subscriptions, AI‑powered platforms, and services that deliver measurable business value.
In honor of International Women’s Day 2026 on March 8, CRN rounded up responses from the 2026 CEO Outlook from a handful of the top leaders of vendor organizations that are laying out how AI‑driven platforms, infrastructure investment, and outcome‑based strategies will define success in the year ahead. From AMD CEO Lisa Su’s push into next‑generation CPUs, GPUs, and rack‑scale AI systems to Liongard CEO Michelle Accardi’s focus on embedded AI that delivers clarity and leverage, these executives are making targeted bets on performance, efficiency, and scale as AI adoption accelerates across the enterprise.
Together, their insights underscore how women at the top of tech are shaping an AI‑driven future—one in which the partners that embrace platforms, automation, and strategic outcomes, will lead the next phase of transformation.
Check out what these executives had to say about the technology investments they’ll be making in 2026, the impact they expect AI to have on their businesses this year and what the keys to success will be for their partners.
Lisa Su
Chair and CEO, AMD
What are the key technology investments you plan to make in 2026?
Our technology investments in 2026 reflect where AI is headed. Based on the pace of adoption, we expect global compute demand to increase by roughly 100x over the next five years. That’s why we are investing across our CPU, GPU, NPU and networking roadmaps to deliver higher performance and better efficiency. We are expanding our capabilities with our first rack-scale solution powered by next-generation Instinct MI455X GPUs, EPYC “Venice” CPUs and Pensando “Vulcano” networking. With workloads growing more demanding and complex, we are also investing in packaging and interconnect technologies, including silicon photonics. Equally important is our continued investment in open software, platform capabilities and developer enablement to make AMD AI solutions easier to deploy and optimize at scale.
Michelle Accardi
CEO, Liongard
What are the key technology investments you plan to make in 2026?
Our 2026 investments are about driving leverage, not more noise. We’re focused on broader discovery across SaaS, identity, cloud, and network assets, paired with embedded AI that surfaces answers, not just assets. We’re also investing in built-in context and prioritization so partners know where to focus, and a platform designed to be monetized, not just monitored. Fewer tools, faster decisions, better outcomes.
Eva Chen
Co-Founder and CEO, Trend Micro
What is the key to success for your channel partners in 2026?
Partners who win will focus on platform, subscriptions, and AI-driven outcomes rather than point products. By leveraging Trend’s specialized cybersecurity AI and deep domain expertise, partners can deliver value that is difficult to commoditize and build long-term customer trust and relevance. To support partners’ expansion and globalization, we provide global consistency and regional support. With Trend’s AI-enabled global partner program and platform, partners can easily access the resources like online platform demos, lead generation campaigns, cyber risk assessment, and AI tools to support simplified and accelerated business.
Kate Johnson
President and CEO, Lumen Technologies
What is the key to success for your channel partners in 2026?
The companies that win will be the ones selling customer outcomes, not components. In the AI economy, networking leaders will bundle connectivity into repeatable solutions — secure AI-ready architectures, validated designs, and lifecycle management — so customers can deploy quickly, scale confidently, and operate simply. That’s what Lumen is focused on for our customers: reducing friction, accelerating consumption, and making complexity disappear.
Sheila Rohra
CEO, Hitachi Vantara
What impact do you expect AI to have on the business you and your partners do together in 2026?
AI is set to exponentially amplify the value of data-driven insights while fueling a historic surge in global productivity. For customers, this means business operations that increasingly become more predictive and self-healing, resolving IT issues before they are even detected by humans. For our partners, this shift opens the door to deeper, higher-value engagement, creating new opportunities to deliver services that help customers adopt, operationalize and scale with confidence, from supporting AI-enabled operations to offering a greater variety of outcome-driven managed solutions. Furthermore, AI factories will become central to producing enterprise intelligence, enabling organizations to continuously generate insights that optimize operations, supply chains and product lifecycles in ways that improve profitability and social responsibility.
Christina Kosmowski
CEO, LogicMonitor
What impact do you expect AI to have on the business you and your partners do together in 2026?
AI will stop being a differentiator and start being table stakes. The real impact is how it changes the partner’s role to deliver measurable business outcomes. As CIOs push toward autonomy, AI-driven observability becomes mission-critical. Partners who embrace that shift will move from selling SKUs to leading strategy. They will build durable revenue streams by combining software with services, deepen customer trust, and lock in long-term value. The partners who lean into AI now will win bigger deals, expand recurring services, and become indispensable to enterprise transformation.
