For the fifth consecutive year, Avnet will release its Avnet Insights survey, which has been keeping a pulse on how engineers are responding to market dynamics since 2021. This year’s survey provides new insight into how engineers are embracing artificial intelligence (AI), and the continued promise and challenges this latest technological evolution presents for product design.
Preliminary insights include:
- More products are shipping with AI incorporated into them. Globally, over half of engineers (56%) said that they have incorporated AI into designed products and solutions they are shipping to customers. This is a 33% increase from last year, when only 42% said they were shipping products with AI incorporated into designs
- Process automation continues to be key. Among current embedded AI deployments with the highest adoption rates, engineers say the top applications are process automation (42%), predictive maintenance (28%), and fault/anomaly detection (28%). These were also the top applications predicted to have the highest adoption rates last year
- Multi-modal AI adoption is accelerating, with engineers increasingly combining Edge AI and ML models to deliver greater functionality and value in their products. Over half of all respondents (57%) said they are prioritising the incorporation of Edge AI and ML equally, underscoring the importance of both technologies. Multi-modal describes using more than one type of AI in a product or using a type of AI that can perform more than one type of inference. For example, a large language model that can process text and image data
- AI incorporation is not without challenges. Engineers pointed to several design and operational challenges they expect when integrating AI into their products. Almost half of engineers globally (46%) listed data quality issues as one of their top design challenges. In terms of operational challenges, 54% of respondents stated that continuous learning and maintenance is the top challenge
- Engineers turning to large-language models (LLMs) for technical questions. Sixteen percent of global engineers said they would prefer to use a publicly available LLM to answer technical questions, but almost half (47%) would prefer to use an LLM trained by engineers outside of their organisation. However, they are turning to tools such as ChatGPT (69%), Google Gemini (57%), and Microsoft Copilot (50%) to help answer these questions, demonstrating the need for more appropriately trained tools for engineers to use.
“Early results from our latest Avnet Insights survey show that worldwide, significantly more products are being shipped with AI incorporated than last year,” said Alex Iuorio, Senior Vice President, Global Supplier Development, Avnet. “AI adoption is growing quickly, and engineers are using it—but they’re still learning. There are challenges ahead, and it’s too soon to know which skills will matter most. Still, as engineers keep applying AI, the potential for growth remains strong.”
The full 2026 Avnet Insights survey will be released in January 2026.
Avnet Insights is an annual survey of engineers. The 2026 survey was conducted online and fielded to 1,200 global respondents from 21st October through to the 5th November 2025. Regionally, respondents were based in the Americas, EMEA, Asia, and Japan.
