Research Report

Cary, N.C. – September 25, 2026 -- Small financial institutions rank ahead of similarly sized insurers, government bodies, health care providers and life sciences firms on AI adoption, with 64% of small banks and credit unions using AI in IT operations, according to a new SAS and IDC study.

The report, "AI for SMBs: Closing the Readiness-Reality Gap," surveyed 1,600 small and midsized business leaders across 28 countries in five regions. SMBs were defined as organizations with 100 to 999 employees in the U.S. and 100 to 499 employees elsewhere.

AI adoption in small banks concentrates heavily in IT functions

Among small financial institutions, 64% report AI use in IT, compared with 47% in finance and risk, 44% in marketing, 42% in customer service and 39% in product development.

New York – September 25, 2026 -- Sixty-nine percent of enterprise technology decision-makers now weigh energy more heavily in AI and data infrastructure decisions than a year ago, according to new research from EnterpriseDB (EDB) presented at the United Nations Global Compact Leaders Summit this week. The survey of 300 respondents, conducted in September 2026, found reliability of supply cited by 49% of respondents as a leading energy factor, with cost and energy efficiency each cited by 48%.

New York – September 24, 2026 -- U.S. oil producers are replacing only 95 barrels of proved developed reserves for every 100 barrels extracted, according to a new white paper from alternative asset manager Kimmeridge, even as natural gas reserve replacement remains above 120%.

Capital efficiency erodes despite operational gains

The industry's three-year value-weighted recycle ratio dropped to 167% in 2025 from 184% in 2019, Kimmeridge found, despite higher revenue per barrel of oil equivalent and continued improvements in corporate costs and drilling efficiency. The report, titled "Shale's Golden Years, Part II: The Cost of Aging," follows the firm's 2024 publication that argued consolidation could offset an aging shale resource base.

New York – September 24, 2026 -- Direct AI-model usage accounts for just 9.4% of an AI agent's recurring monthly operating cost, according to an illustrative model cited in a new report from The Conference Board, underscoring how governance, monitoring, and human supervision drive the bulk of expenses in agentic AI deployments.

Executives rank AI as the top investment priority for 2026

In The Conference Board's C-Suite Outlook 2026, 43.6% of executives identified AI and technology as their leading investment priority, ahead of any other category. The new report argues that capturing value from that spending requires more than purchasing tools or running pilots.

Las Vegas – September 24, 2026 -- Hands-on participation at live brand events correlates with an 85% increase in purchase intent among deeply engaged attendees, according to new research from experiential agency Spiro released today.

Spiro's second EMIR report isolates which design choices drive trust and sales action

The findings come from EMIR: The Deeper Dive, the second wave of Spiro's Experiential Marketing Impact Report (EMIR), based on a survey of 2,000 additional B2B and B2C live-event attendees. The first EMIR report, published in 2025, established a business case linking live experiences to trust, advocacy and purchase intent; this follow-up isolates which specific design decisions produce those results.

New York – September 24, 2026 -- Eighty-one percent of senior living executives say resident acuity has increased over the past two years, according to a new report from Sage, an integrated Care Intelligence Platform for senior living and skilled nursing. The findings, unveiled at Sage's caregiving summit Sage Shift, draw on a survey of 510 senior living executives, community leaders and caregivers conducted between July 9 and August 31, 2026, alongside operational data from communities running Sage's platform.

San Francisco – September 23, 2026 -- None of the 15 major institutions interviewed by Bitwise Asset Management reduced their crypto allocations during a roughly 50% market drawdown between Q4 2025 and Q2 2026, with several increasing positions instead, according to the firm's new Institutional Crypto Adoption report.

Bitwise, a crypto asset manager overseeing $9 billion in client assets, conducted in-depth interviews with senior investment professionals at endowments, foundations, public pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, multi-family offices, investment consultants, and public companies to determine what institutions hold, why, and what would trigger a sale.

San Jose, Calif. – September 23, 2026 -- Cisco and Omdia research finds that 95% of enterprises say their existing AIOps tools cannot keep pace with current network demands, while more than half have already shifted to AgenticOps, where AI agents act autonomously in production network environments.

Daily alert volumes have outpaced human capacity to respond

The average organization generates about 4,100 monitoring alerts and events daily, more than half of them network related. Clearing that backlog manually would require roughly 100 IT specialists. Nearly half of network alerts are closed without investigation, and a similar share of investigation time is spent chasing false positives.

Breda, Netherlands – September 22, 2026 -- Light electric vehicles (LEVs) such as e-scooters, e-cargo bikes and fatbikes could reduce car dependency in the Netherlands but are simultaneously raising cycling accident risk on the country's shared bike paths, according to research from Breda University of Applied Sciences (BUas).

Dutch cycling network faces new pressure from electric micro-mobility

The Netherlands operates the world's most extensive cycling infrastructure, with 22 million bicycles serving 18 million residents across a 153,000-kilometre network. Bikes account for 28% of all trips nationally, a model increasingly studied and replicated by cities globally. That system is now being tested by a growing volume of LEVs entering the same narrow cycle paths.

San Francisco – September 19, 2026 -- A new national poll from Hopelab and Data for Progress finds that 88% of young people ages 13 to 24 engage in doomscrolling, with roughly half reporting they lose more than an hour of sleep on nights they scroll negative or upsetting content. The findings arrive as Meta implements a landmark child safety settlement with 47 states, the District of Columbia, and several U.S. territories requiring overnight curfews, school-hour notification limits, and daily time caps for teens on Instagram and Facebook.

Doomscrolling hits 32% of young people daily, concentrated at bedtime

Of the 88% who reported the habit, 32% said they doomscroll every day or multiple times a day. Roughly two-thirds said the behavior peaks during free time or before bed over the prior two weeks, directly overlapping with the sleep window Meta's new curfew provisions target.