KMWorld Trend-Setting Products of 2026

KMWorld's Trend-Setting Products list of 2026 identifies the contributions of forward-thinking companies that are leading the way in innovating for knowledge access and sharing, improving knowledge flows, and paving the way for knowledge managers.

eGain Composer Recognized as a Trend-Setting Product of the Year

One of the newest additions to the eGain portfolio is Composer, a modular developer platform built on eGain's knowledge foundation. When IT teams need their AI applications to use the most accurate content, they can pull in whatever Composer component they need through open APIs, SDKs, and MCP servers, build agents that orchestrate and take action, and inherit enterprise security and governance automatically. Native MCP and A2A support connects teams to any LLM or agent.

RightAnswers KCS v6 - Turn Support Complexity Into Competitive Advantage With AI-Powered Knowledge Management

Built on 25 years of KM expertise and flexible AI options, RightAnswers transforms how teams create, curate, and deliver knowledge. Generative AI assistance drafts and improves articles in minutes, while built-in quality checks keep content accurate across thousands of articles. Federated search and connected knowledge surface trusted answers wherever agents and customers work, integrating seamlessly across your entire tech stack.

Stravito AI Assistant: AI that connects all your consumer intelligence with all your decisions. Finally!

Stravito is the platform enterprise teams use to find what you already know, at decision speed, synthesize your knowledge into contextual, analyst-depth answers and pressure-test ideas against consumer perspectives built from your own data before investment is committed.

Talkdesk: Talkdesk CXA - part of a unified platform built for the hybrid workforce

Talkdesk helps organizations improve productivity, reduce cost to serve, and deliver better customer experiences as their workforce evolves.

Adaptive Learning and Personalization Within the Enterprise

Personalization and adaptive learning, from the KM perspective, revolve around human knowledge needs, which can change as projects, perspectives, and products change. Plus, given rapid technological advances that accelerate the ability of enterprises to understand those changes that affect personalization, people's expectations have heightened. Being able to tailor knowledge to individual preferences is suddenly the norm, although individuals may have to inform chatbots, language models, and knowledgebases of what has changed.

Reimagining Workflows in the Agentic Age

Not all workflow is agentic, and not all agentic AI is workflow, but where the two converge, a very dynamic market has emerged for companies both large and small. As recently as September 2025, Market.us predicted that the global agentic AI workflow market will grow from $5.2 billion as of 2024 to $227 billion by 2034, meaning a growth approaching 50% per year. Few software sectors can match this upside potential, so look for a lot of action here within the next few years.

2026 The KMWorld AI 100: The Impact of AI on KM is Inescapable

While AI holds the promise of radically transforming KM, human oversight takes on intensified responsibilities for ensuring the knowledge provided is accurate, timely, and relevant as well as guarding against violations of privacy and proactively securing sensitive data.Value is the key to adopting any technology, and AI tools are no different. AI-enabled KM provides opportunities for KM to shine and for knowledge managers to prove their value to their organizations.

AI 100 Trailblazer: Upland RightAnswers - Transforming enterprise knowledge into trusted AI answers

Purpose-built for complex, high-volume environments, RightAnswers empowers teams to resolve issues up to 4x faster with 49% faster search speed, achieve 80% AI-generated search response accuracy, and scale operations without increasing headcount through a proven combination of KCS-aligned workflows and next-generation capabilities including Gen Answers and RightAnswers X. 

AI 100 Trailblazer: Openstream.ai

The Eva™ platform powers a growing portfolio of Operational AI solutions, from Collaborative Agentic AI systems for high-stakes knowledge work to AI Virtual Agents, AI Voice Agents, and Digital Humans for customer and employee engagement across voice, vision, gesture, and text.

AI 100 Trailblazer: CrafterQ - The Future of Knowledge is Conversational

At CrafterQ, we believe the future of digital experiences is conversational. AI agents will become a new layer across websites, applications, documentation, and customer experiences, helping people discover information, solve problems, purchase products and make decisions more effectively.

AI 100 Trailblazer: KMS Lighthouse — Advancing Enterprise Knowledge with GenAI and Agentic AI

By combining deeply governed generative AI with agent-driven execution, KMS Lighthouse enables organizations to move beyond passive knowledge access toward intelligent, outcome-driven knowledge operations.

AI 100 Trailblazer: Shelf - Knowledge and Data-First AI for the Agentic Enterprise

Built on a layered architecture, Shelf delivers agentic experiences across chat, voice, and email, orchestrates how agents reason and act through CortexAI, and scales Super Agents across contact-center and back-office workflows.

AI 100 Trailblazer: eGain - The Trusted Knowledge Platform for AI and Humans

Enterprises choose the eGain AI Knowledge Hub—available as a full-stack solution that can be configured in days or assembled to spec using APIs, SDKs, and MCPs on the eGain Composer platform to ensure a governed, compliant content foundation.

KM and IT Find Collaboration Productive

IT plays a role in providing a port of entry for customer service solutions and for integrating them with the various repositories that form the knowledgebase. After that point, most KM solutions can be configured and managed by subject matter experts. But the infrastructure on which they are built, whether SaaS or on-prem, must provide the capacity and speed required to deliver their potential.

KMWorld 100 Companies That Matter in Knowledge Management 2026

Companies on this list are wonderful examples of how their products expand the power of KM in changing knowledge environments. They stand out in the KM field, and we applaud their accomplishments. As always, the list is meant to generate interest and to spark discussion. Let us know what you think, and alert us to anything we might have missed.

Securing Your Internal Knowledge Amidst Shadow AI

The pervasiveness of advanced ML models, as well as their effectiveness for increasing productivity, has multiplied the difficulty in securing internal knowledge. Organizations cannot afford to forsake the staples of data access governance,which include data discovery, data classification, access control policy authoring and implementation, monitoringand auditing for regulatory compliance, data privacy, and data security.

Impact of AI on KM Strategy: A Two-Way Street

AI's impact on KM strategy is omnipresent and includes recognizing its potential, particularly for enhancing existing knowledgebases and automating existing processes, while acknowledging the critical role of accurate, clean data to which organizations have access. Consider it a two-way street when setting organizational strategies.

The Next Edge in Knowledge Management: KM for the Modern Workforce and the Era of AI

Traditional KM has always recognized that the most valuable knowledge is not just stored in documents or databases, but exchanged through conversations, mentorship, and collaboration. It's the wisdom that walks out the door when someone retires, the lessons learned from past successes and failures, and the expertise that enables teams to solve problems faster and innovate with confidence. Today, however, the landscape has shifted. We have more hybrid teams, distributed expertise, and the continued rise of AI.

Knowledge Automation: The End of Manual Knowledge Management - eGain

Enterprise AI deployments are only as good as the knowledge that feeds them. Knowledge Managers relying on manual KM processes will find themselves unable to keep pace with the demands of AI-powered customer engagement. Knowledge Automation provides the solution—a continuously optimized, trusted knowledge layer powering both human agents and AI.