Emily Flippen

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For Dan Kaplinger, Anders Beiland, and the entire Motley Fool Money team, I'm Emily Flippen.

We'll see you tomorrow.

Talks of an AI bubble are as prevalent as ever, but real world investors are still bullish.

We're digging into the next phase of AI today on Motley Fool Money.

Today is Tuesday, January 6th.

Welcome to Motley Fool Money.

I'm your host, Emily Flippen, and today I'm joined by Fool analyst, Asit Sharma, and the head of AI here at The Motley Fool, Donato Riccio, to discuss the investor outlook for AI and 2026 report.

So I have you both on today because The Fool recently published an interesting report around real-world AI usage, of which you two were obviously integral to its creation.

This report, which is called The Motley Fool's 2026 and

AI Investor Outlook Report is available for free at fool.com backslash research backslash AI dash investor dash outlook for anyone who wants to read it.

But don't worry, we do have that link in the show notes for easy access, so you don't have to memorize it.

But for anybody who can't read it or just hasn't yet, I'm really excited to dig into some of the findings here today on the Motley Fool Money podcast.

And I want to start with what the report says about real-world investors and what they're doing with AI today.

And then we'll move to where, Donato, you think the industry is heading.

And

and then wrap with Asit's framework for investing in AI, including where the opportunities may be the most ripe.

Now, The Motley Fool's 2026 AI Investor Outlook Report did survey around 2,600 American adults in November 2025, and the headline is pretty simple.

Amongst people who already own AI stocks, 36% plan to increase their holdings, 57% plan to keep it the same, and only 7% plan to reduce.

Moreover, a whopping 62% of respondents said they're confident AI-heavy companies will deliver strong long-term returns.