Austin, Texas, USA, January 23, 2026
The era of the “Data Technician” is ending as budgets shift toward the “AI Shepherd” and agentic oversight.
The Futurum Group has released its “1H 2026 Data Intelligence, Analytics, & Infrastructure Market Sizing & Five-Year Forecast.” The new study reveals that the global Data Intelligence, Analytics, & Infrastructure (DIAI) market is projected to reach US$541.1 billion in 2026, growing at a 16.9% CAGR to surpass US$1.2 trillion by 2031. This acceleration is fueled by the mass transition of GenAI from experimental pilots to production-grade “Agentic” workflows, which necessitates a fundamental re-platforming of the enterprise data estate.
The report captures a structural shift in value creation dubbed the “Data Technician to AI Shepherd” transition. As automated “Zero-ETL” pipelines commoditize manual data engineering—resulting in slower growth of roughly 12% for traditional integration—budget is aggressively migrating toward agentic oversight. Consequently, the Semantic Layer is projected to grow 19% in 2026, while Data Observability is set to expand by 22%, emerging as critical control planes to prevent AI hallucinations and ensure deterministic outcomes.
Figure 1: Data Intelligence, Analytics, and Infrastructure – 2026 Growth by Submarket
The data indicates that companies can no longer treat the semantic layer as a subsegment within Business Intelligence (BI), but must view it as the critical translation tier that defines business metrics to ensure consistency across AI agents. Furthermore, the “Unique Growth Curves” identified in the report highlight that without a unified metric layer to “ground” LLMs, autonomous agents will fail to scale due to data ontology ambiguities.
“The era of the ‘Data Technician’—defined by manual pipeline plumbing and fragile ETL scripting—is effectively over. It is being replaced by the era of the ‘AI Shepherd,’ where human expertise is focused on intent and governing data quality,” said Brad Shimmin, Vice President and Practice Lead for Data Intelligence, Analytics, & Infrastructure at The Futurum Group. “Companies must stop buying shelfware for ingestion and instead move 20% of the data engineering budget into data observability. If you can’t detect a schema drift in 5 minutes, your autonomous agent may just make a million-dollar pricing error.”
Our research also highlights several key developments:
- Regional Divergence: A “Digital Leapfrog” effect is propelling the Asia Pacific (APAC) region, which is forecast to surge from 20% growth in 2025 to nearly 27% by 2031, outpacing EMEA which faces a “Regulation Saturation” plateau with growth hovering around 11-12%.
- The Two-Speed Economy: “Digital Native” verticals like Financial Services and Communications, Media & Tech (CMT) are accelerating immediately with 18%+ growth, capturing early ROI from automated code generation. Conversely, “Physical” verticals like Utilities face a protracted integration curve due to the complexity of converging IT with Operational Technology (OT).
- Storage Market Volatility: The Data Storage layer will experience a “Dip & Rip” pattern, temporarily decelerating to 11% growth in 2026 due to workload consolidation, before re-accelerating to 18% by 2030 as AI training data volumes overwhelm early efficiency gains.
Subscribers can read more in the “1H 2026 Data Intelligence, Analytics, & Infrastructure Market Sizing & Five-Year Forecast Report” on the Futurum Intelligence Platform. Non-subscribers can click here for more information.
About Futurum Intelligence for Market Leaders
Futurum Intelligence’s Data Intelligence, Analytics, & Infrastructure practice area provides actionable insight from analysts, reports, and interactive visualization datasets, helping leaders drive their organizations through transformation and business growth. Subscribers can log into the platform at https://app.futurumgroup.com/, and non-subscribers can find additional information at Futurum Intelligence.
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Author Information
Brad Shimmin is Vice President and Practice Lead, Data Intelligence, Analytics, & Infrastructure at Futurum. He provides strategic direction and market analysis to help organizations maximize their investments in data and analytics. Currently, Brad is focused on helping companies establish an AI-first data strategy.
With over 30 years of experience in enterprise IT and emerging technologies, Brad is a distinguished thought leader specializing in data, analytics, artificial intelligence, and enterprise software development. Consulting with Fortune 100 vendors, Brad specializes in industry thought leadership, worldwide market analysis, client development, and strategic advisory services.
Brad earned his Bachelor of Arts from Utah State University, where he graduated Magna Cum Laude. Brad lives in Longmeadow, MA, with his beautiful wife and far too many LEGO sets.
