CoreMedia has always been… well, at the core of media.

In fact, the company started its journey in the throes of multimedia, with two university students in Hamburg developing software that could create and edit text, audio, video, and images – and store it all on a single CD-ROM for distribution.

(Remember those shiny, futuristic disks? They've made quite a comeback in vintage record stores, especially among Gen Z and nostalgia folk in my X cohort. But I digress…)

It was an early template for content management circa 1996, before the internet evolved it into something more dynamic and digitally scalable. In the early 2000s, when e-commerce was exploding from the crib, the idea was adapted into a true model for a modern CMS, fit for the online era of shopping and transactions.

When mobile and social media entered the fray, those too became media channels for CoreMedia – and global brands flocked to its innovative platform. Its elegance and extensibility proved its value across many industries, namely the retail and fashion sectors, which attracted the likes of Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger. Those are big shoes in any dressing room.

Technology and channels will undoubtedly change, but CoreMedia’s mission continues to meet the moment, endeavoring to simplify complexity with a powerful, comprehensive solution. Its product ecosystem offers a blended range of DXP capabilities, with its hybrid headless, GEO-ready CMS features at the center. This is bolstered by rich personalization and experimentation, including layers of customer data and surveys that flesh out its appeal to a range of segments.

And of course, there’s AI – and it’s not just powering elemental copilot features for content management. It’s also behind the ubiquitous CoreMedia KIO, an assistant with expansive tooling for content and journey experience orchestration.

I spoke to CoreMedia CEO Sören Stamer about KIO late last year, when it first launched. As he told me then, the advent of AI in his company’s platform was going to amplify CX in a meaningful way – with the biggest leap in productivity in decades.

CoreMedia CEO and Co-founder Sören Stamer. Source: LinkedIn

“I think one of the big bets we’re making is that the customer experience of the future will be unified,” he said at the time. “Not just the digital parts. Not just the website, apps, and the like, but the human interaction – the human touch that will also be integrated into this one unified customer experience.”

Was he right? Seemingly so. And that human touch became a critical point as agentic AI leapt to the forefront of everything.

A few months later, at CoreMedia's Connect & Partner Engage 2025 conference, Sören reinforced his company's vision with a bold promise: to challenge assumptions, ignite curiosity, and reframe what customer experience means in this age of exponential AI. And it is, indeed, exponential; this year alone, the performance has improved in profound ways. Just as I've discussed with other vendors, he emphasized how AI is getting better at longer tasks, but we're still wrestling with what he called a “sycophantic ChatGPT.”

As we wave goodbye to 2025 and charge into the year ahead, I’m being served with a lot of predictions, many of which are sage and based on substantive data. The vendors, enterprises, organizations, and analysts I’ve been conversing with are circling a number of trends, but proving out the ROI of AI has (as you might predict) the most gravitational pull.

When I recently spoke to Sören, he surfaced a set of tensions that he sees as defining factors. AI tops his list, but he also zeroed in on the importance of customer experience in the mix, as well as digital sovereignty, marketing automation, and hyper-personalization.

While none of these themes are what I would call disruptive, AI is forcing them to evolve in new ways, and we dug into that across Sören’s theses. One thing is certain: things are changing faster than ever, and CoreMedia’s focus on governance at a global scale – and keeping humans firmly in control – is at the core of its strategy.

1. Digital sovereignty in a fragmenting world

One of the topics that Sören immediately focused on is the value and impact of digital sovereignty. In his mind, it’s not just political fodder, but a foundational requirement for operational control, resilience, and long-term trust in the digital economy.

If you’re not familiar with the concept of digital sovereignty, it’s the ability for an entity – be it a nation, organization, or individual – to control their own “digital destiny.” This can encompass domain over the data, software, hardware, and infrastructure components, helping to ensure governance, security, and alignment with laws and values.

Digital sovereignty can incorporate myriad elements that support autonomy in the broad ecosystem, from managing data flows to protecting critical systems. It often deals with considerations like data storage, operations, and other key technologies that enable a digital ecosystem.

But it’s also about agency and identity, which is surfacing in unique ways. One of my favorite examples: MaplePT, Canada’s sovereign LLM, which is trained on the country’s data, runs on its local infrastructure, and is keenly tuned to represent Canadian values. Based on the website, you might assume it also pairs well with pancakes.

Obviously, this is a heady subject with vast implications. We started our discussion around the volatility of global market dynamics, and Sören didn’t sugarcoat the complexity. Different regions are moving at different speeds – and sometimes in opposite directions – on the uneven topology of digital sovereignty and compliance.

Case in point: Europe’s evolving regulatory posture. While the continent has led the way with fierce governance in a wide range of areas, there’s been some notable modulation. This past November, the EU announced that it will scale back tenets of its landmark privacy and AI laws, buckling to pressure from Big Tech while attempting to revive a sluggish economy.

“Europe woke up a little bit this year to realizing maybe we are overdoing it, so they will scale back GDPR, for example,” he said. “And with AI, the perception now is that Europe is over-regulating too early and too much before something can even grow.”

At the same time, enterprises in Europe and beyond are doubling down on sovereignty and control. This is manifesting at the cloud layer as brands consider going back on metal in their own datacenters – particularly when it comes to training AI models. It makes sense, and this “cloud dilemma” is something I’ve been tracking at multiple levels across the market. Considerations have shifted from “Where is my data stored?” to “Who can access it in a crisis – and who might deny access?”

“We trusted Facebook, and then at some point in time, we couldn’t do that anymore. So how long do we use these large language models and push our customers there? At some point in time, the customer experience is owned by OpenAI or by Google, and not by the brand.”

As Sören said, a loss of infrastructure control can translate into a loss of brand control. Large U.S.-based cloud providers might offer convenience, but that can be a strategic trap – and if you outsource too much of your infrastructure and intelligence to hyperscalers or LLM providers, you may slowly be ceding your brand.

This is where sovereignty comes in, enabling companies to define their own standards for data protection, scalability, and performance, thus strengthening resilience when the going gets tough. It’s being tested in the AI realm as enterprises rely on AI models and tooling that pose risks to a brand’s relationship with its customers.

“We trusted Facebook, and then at some point in time, we couldn’t do that anymore,” he said, referencing the fallout from the Cambridge Analytica debacle. “So how long do we use these large language models and push our customers there? At some point in time, the customer experience is owned by OpenAI or by Google, and not by the brand.”

Still, at the cloud level, AWS, Azure, and Google have scalability in their DNA – making it a compelling solution in a market that moves at light speed. Given this competing tension, Sören framed a practical answer with one word: composability.

“Some [enterprises] are completely fine with using hyperscalers,” he said. “Others are very sensitive. So composability is the answer. We enable them to have the setup they need.”

Digital sovereignty is particularly crucial in highly sensitive industries and segments, where control is paramount. Sören pointed to examples like The Schwarz Group and the German army, which insist on strict data and infrastructure control to ensure security around their mission.

Looking ahead, Sören sees an urgent need for platforms – specifically CMSes – to evolve beyond a “cloud‑first” posture in the hyperscaler lane. They must be sovereignty‑aware and able to span the leading cloud providers, sovereign ecosystems, and on‑prem environments without breaking governance or compromising the customer experience.

In 2026, the winners may very well be the brands and platforms that understand and can extend across this mix. Getting there will require modular architectures, explicit control planes, and the ability to swap models or infrastructure without rewriting the whole experience.

2. The ‘New Customer Comfort Zone’ for CX

During our conversation, Sören explained where humans actually prefer AI, and how that preference is reshaping expectations. His favorite example wasn’t a software platform – it was Waymo.

“The one thing that I predicted last year was that humans would be surprised how often we prefer robots to humans, and you can see it now,” he said. “When you now go to San Francisco, people all the time tell me, ‘I love Waymo so much more than Uber.’”

I tend to agree. And if you haven’t experienced it yourself, put aside your reservations and take one for a spin – you’ll immediately understand why the attributes of safety, comfort, and predictability translate for riders.

Sören went deeper with the psychoanalysis, explaining how some passengers find it more comforting than getting into an Uber with a stranger behind the wheel at midnight. “It’s clean, it’s not driving too fast or too slow,” he emphasized. “One friend told me, ‘You know what, I get into Waymo, and it’s probably half an hour of meditation, because it’s serene, it’s quiet, and I don’t have to talk.’”

Of course, there’s more to this example than just an autonomous vehicle. As Sören told me, Waymo’s success relies on more than just AI and LiDAR. There are, of course, humans in the loop – and this blend of AI agents in the front and people in the background is what he expects to see in the customer experience model of the future.

This is also critical when it comes to customer engagement and values-driven support. In Sören’s view, AI doesn’t replace humans; instead, it ensures that human support appears exactly where empathy creates the most value. As he said, loyalty is built through relevance – not through discounts.

Without question, the lines between marketing, sales, and service are blurring. That’s positioning CX as a critical differentiator – and according to Sören, it needs to deliver. “What matters in 2026 is the seamless experience,” he said. “Successful brands orchestrate data and AI to create fluid, continuous journeys.”

Part of that delivery is understanding where people fit – and this notion of values-driven support focuses on the application of human resources where they matter most. For example, most of us don’t need a consultant to buy a candle. But a new kitchen? That’s where essential human expertise enters the equation.

Brands need to embrace this distinction, using AI to identify high-value leads and offering customers one-click access to live experts at the right point in the journey. This targeted empathy drives trust – not blanket automation.

Sören also cited some metrics surrounding conversions and how this reflects a lack of optimal CX and poor journey planning. Brands spend billions on advertising while only around 2% of visitors convert. As he noted, the bigger opportunity lies in activating the 98% of hesitant users, drop-offs, and undecided buyers. Meanwhile, the “paradox of choice” remains a measurable phenomenon, leading to 42% of shoppers abandoning purchases.

Clearly, we can do better. And if there’s a “New Customer Comfort Zone,” it’s only going to be achieved with the right mix of AI and humans in the ecosystem. Finding that balance is a critical goal for brands as they look ahead to 2026.

3. The growing impact of agentic commerce and AI interfaces

In 2025, I wrote a lot about the rise of the “Agent Experience,” reflecting the growth of AI strategies that will demand greater extensibility – and ultimately shift into the realm of agent-to-agent interactions.

It’s a fact: day by day, customers are engaging in more automated conversations with a range of purpose-built agents. As Sören explained, the brands that learn to communicate effectively with both humans and AI agents will gain a decisive competitive edge. He sees things like instant checkout in AI-driven environments becoming a game-changer – one where content, context, and trust influence where purchases happen.

How will this manifest? Look no further than the evolution of UX. According to Sören, a new breed of conversational interfaces – powered by AI agents and AI browsers – are already redefining how people search and buy. As such, more and more decisions are happening inside chat interfaces rather than via traditional digital storefronts.

“Digital assistants will act on behalf of consumers, sending targeted, often complex queries and making purchase decisions for their users,” he stated. “Brands must create transparent, machine-readable, trustworthy content to be selected by these agents.”

I mentioned the agent-to-agent evolution. We’re still a ways off from autonomous purchasing agents becoming the norm, but Sören sees it coming – and likely following the same adoption curve as early e-commerce: initial skepticism, then mass trust.

With the exponential rise of the answer engines (namely ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google’s AI Overviews), the shift in search behavior is having a chilling effect on website traffic. Accoring to Gartner, search engine volume is predicted to drop by 25% in 2026 as a direct result of AI chatbots and virtual agents.

Facing this precipitous decline, Sören doubled down on the need for brands to build their reputations not only with humans, but with AI agents – specifically through GEO (Generative Engine Optimization).

Visibility in GEO has become a hot trend within the hallowed halls of marketing. That said, most organizations have lagged in adopting the practice, which is reliant on many of the same tenets as SEO – where content must be reference-ready, structured, and reliable.

For 2026, agentic strategies will continue to be the primary motion, with AI agents as a more visible interface. But as Sören repeatedly framed, humans are the key to success – so the most successful models will put people in control of orchestrating and governing the experience. CMS and CX platforms that can route, supervise, and learn from this interplay will create more trusted experiences.

4. The next wave of hyper-personalization and marketing automation

The quest for personalization is much like the search for the Holy Grail: the promise is intoxicating, but it’s always been elusive. As Sören said, we’ve been talking about platform-centric and third-party personalization tools for the last two decades, but AI and new experience models are finally raising the bar.

“Personalization isn’t new,” he said. “What’s new is its velocity. Hyper-personalization means connecting intent, data, and content in real time, and anticipating needs before they’re expressed.”

He pointed to social media darling TikTok as a sort of tipping point for the evolution of real-world value – and how their technology, practices, and feedback loop have changed the game.

“With TikTok entering the content business, they were able to quickly figure out what a new user likes,” he observed. “But they also have the ability with this dynamic experience to test everything and figure out what I might be interested in, and even stuff that I don’t know that I couldn’t tell them.”

That might border on intrusive, but it's just another example of how users are opting for personalized experiences when it's clear, transparent, and also solves problems. He contrasted TikTok with the Netflix challenge of wading through endless choices. “We don’t have time to actively look through thousands of products. It’s a bit like using Netflix: it takes half an hour just to discuss what to watch, and it ends up being a frustrating experience to find something.”

“AI is not a substitute for creativity, but an amplifier. The future belongs to hybrid teams that combine automation with human intuition.”

The future, in Sören’s view, is low-friction, intent-driven journeys that run the experience gamut. Users expect every touchpoint (from app to website, chat to call center) to reflect congruous details. Fragmentation creates inconsistent messaging and operational barriers, resulting in a poor CX and a lack of trust.

To get there, AI will assume the lion’s share of routine tasks – mundane and labor-intensive things like tagging, layout optimization, performance analytics – freeing teams to think strategically. As he said, automation only works when paired with human judgment.

“AI is not a substitute for creativity, but an amplifier,” Sören said. “The future belongs to hybrid teams that combine automation with human intuition.”

The true goal is realizing automation’s benefit of increased efficiency without eroding quality, thereby enabling real-time, high-relevance interactions. As he pointed out, true ROI emerges only when AI is integrated into business processes, not isolated in standalone tools.

One of the other trends that Sören is tracking is the continued dissipation of static websites. We’ve been talking a lot about this in content and at conferences throughout 2025, and we’re already seeing the emergence of dynamic or adaptive digital experiences that shift based on user intent, with content rendered in real time to serve more relevant content. This will be particularly impactful in the retail and commerce sectors.

If there’s one overarching theme that Sören presented, it’s that personalization firmly relies on trust. Customers are more willing to share their data when the value is clear and tangible. This includes things like saving time or being served smarter, more accurate recommendations. According to Sören, loyalty programs and contextual recommendations express how this trust is earned.

In terms of key takeaways, it’s evident that AI is unlocking the potential of personalization in new ways. Along those lines, static experiences and siloed contact centers will feel increasingly anachronistic. The real opportunity is in platforms that continuously infer intent from content, clicks, and conversations — and then adapt experiences in real time.

How CoreMedia is positioning for 2026

So where does CoreMedia fit into this ever-changing landscape? Sören described their strategy as fusing enterprise‑grade content management, omnichannel governance, and conversation-aware AI – positioning them as an extensible solution to meet the challenges of evolving CX. Within that, he sees a merging of critical hemispheres that provides the optimal ecosystem for building the future of digital experiences.

“We bring together these two sides,” he said. “One is for enterprises to have a really strong content platform for omnichannel and all the governance at a global scale. And the second is that we indeed are the only ones who bring together all the digital channels powered by an AI agent in between. So we’re connecting conversations with humans, with AI, and the visual experience, all with one profile to be able to react in real time and in a composable way that connects with whatever kind of system you have. That can be your commerce, ERP, or call center that we can quickly plug into, and that’s the benefit we provide.”

As Sören emphasized, it’s the AI angle making these experiences more meaningful, including the value of personalization. As he told me, CoreMedia’s AI is about enhancing the ability to understand content and create better outcomes, but also improving interactions with the customer and driving better actions. He sees big opportunities ahead, specifically in industries where market pressures are being exerted and things are accelerating – even in light of economic uncertainty.

“For us, we’re looking at an exciting year with more customers globally,” he said. “We see different markets where there are heightened pressure points right now, like financial institutions. They are investing heavily, I think because the market is moving quickly. With big players, we see telcos moving forward, utilities, and retail depending a bit on the economy. They are certainly impacted more than others when things slow down, but yeah – it’s an exciting year ahead.”

2025 unquestionably brought a groundswell of change to the CMS and DXP categories, with significant trends emerging across the topology. Along with our own reporting, you can read our response to the recent Forrester DXP Wave report for more signals on how AI is transforming everything.

Despite the hyperbolic competition amongst enterprise vendors in a market flush with choice, CoreMedia continues to maintain a solid position across the various analyst grids. In February, the company landed on the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Digital Experience Platforms for the sixth year in a row, recognized for its ability to execute and its completeness of vision. In November, IDC named it a “Major Player” in its 2025 Marketscape for its AI-enabled hybrid headless and full-stack CMS solutions.

My Recommendation:

As brands reassess the benefits of investing in composable stacks, platforms like CoreMedia are providing a strong, well-integrated solution with proven performance and future-proof architectural capabilities. It offers a solid mix of comprehensive DXP capabilities with hybrid headless features for enabling omni and multichannel strategies, delivering an edge with its pre-built connectors and heritage of rapid deployment. CoreMedia’s unified customer data and AI-powered personalization are enabling enterprises to realize value, and their growing focus on conversational commerce offers clear capabilities for driving a scalable commerce strategy. While it does appeal to retail sectors, it’s robust enough to meet a wide range of market applications.

One last note: 2026 won’t be about chasing the shiniest AI demo. Enterprises are demanding high utility outcomes from their AI investments. Success will belong to the platforms and practitioners that can blend sovereignty with scale, AI agents with human judgment, and personalization with enterprise‑grade governance – and CoreMedia has its eye on the right blend of trends.

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Key Trends for 2026: What’s Ahead for Content Management, CX, and AI with CoreMedia’s Sören Stamer