A global survey of 1,500+ Chief Product Officers offers data on the future of product leadership and how organizations can create and deliver value at the speed of AI.
SAN FRANCISCO, May 27, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Products That Count, the world's largest nonprofit community of product leaders, and Mighty Capital, a venture capital firm specializing in product-led investing, today released the fifth annual Chief Product Officer ("CPO") Insights Report. Drawing on data from more than 1,500 product leaders across industries and geographies, from Fortune 1000 giants to early-stage startups, the 2026 edition dissects how traditional boundaries between product, design, and engineering are collapsing, and explores the emergence of a new kind of operator: the Product Builder, a hybrid Product Manager-engineering role redefining what it means to ship in the AI era. Among the report's most consequential findings: the Product Manager role as we know it will be obsolete by 2030.
"This year's insights carry new weight, because AI's impact on product management is arguably one of the most consequential shifts happening in tech right now. There's a lot of discourse around how companies should meet this moment," said SC Moatti, Founder and Board Chair at Products That Count and Founding Managing Partner at Mighty Capital. "We move beyond the theoretical with data and actionable strategies that give product leaders and organizations the foundation they need to thrive in this new reality."
Key Takeaways from the 2026 Report: What Happens When AI Eliminates Constraint
Product teams have always operated under one simple constraint: building software is expensive, slow, and resource-intensive. Everything about traditional product organizations is designed around that reality, from roadmaps to careful feature prioritization shaped by what engineering had bandwidth to ship. The 2026 CPO Insights Report confirms that in the age of AI, that constraint has largely vanished.
Three out of four product leaders are now using AI to accelerate prototyping and product exploration, with ripple effects emerging across every stage of the product lifecycle, from discovery to iteration to management:
- Product Builders Are the New Product Managers
- In the last year, the number of Product Builders has increased 10x. Simultaneously, the number of traditional product managers has declined by 30% across all industries and by as much as 70% in SaaS.
- While it once required a team of 12 people to develop a single product, a team of 12 Product Builders can now deliver 12 products.
- Speed to Market Is the #1 Concern for CPOs in 2026
- Speed to market is now the primary internal challenge facing CPOs, jumping from 14% in 2025 to 22% in 2026.
- Bottlenecks have shifted from building to launching: go-to-market execution, customer adoption, and organizational alignment are now where products get stuck.
- CPOs are Moving up the Stack to Bet on New Market Opportunities
- CPOs are spending more time on strategy (74%, up from 69% in 2025) and innovation (31%, up from 21%), and less time on stakeholder management (10%, down from 28%) and roadmap development (10%, down from 18%).
- The most ambitious CPOs are expanding scope across three new dimensions: geographies, market segments, and routes to market, blurring lines between product and marketing as they take direct ownership of positioning, adoption, and monetization.
- A New Role Is Emerging: the Chief Product Investor
- A greater stake in the bottom line is giving rise to the Chief Product Investor, a CPO who thinks like a portfolio manager, places bets across product lines, and cuts what isn't working before the financial metrics catch up.
- One in three CPOs now owns the AI M&A budget, deciding whether to acquire capabilities or build them with AI-native teams.
"The transformational leaders in this next stage of AI will be those willing to redesign how products are built and how organizations operate," said Renée Niemi, Resident Chief Product Officer at Products That Count. "Good product leaders will move features faster. Great ones will rethink the product OS. The best will operate as portfolio-driven engines of innovation, placing bets and scaling what works as Chief Product Investors."
A Legacy of Data-Driven Predictions
The 2026 CPO Insights Report continues Products That Count and Mighty Capital's proven track record of accurate, early predictions:
- The rise of the CPO, as predicted in the 2022 CPO Insights Report: The role existed at 3-4% of Fortune 1000 companies in 2020, compared to more than 30% just two years later.
- The increase in product leaders taking bottom-line ownership, as predicted in the 2023 CPO Insights Report: Over half of all CPOs now have Profit and Loss (P&L) responsibility.
- The promotion of CPOs to CEO and President, as predicted in the 2024 CPO Insights Report: 20% of Products That Count CPO award winners were promoted to CEO or President within 12 months.
To download the full 2026 CPO Insights Report, visit productsthatcount.org/CPO-research.
ABOUT PRODUCTS THAT COUNT
Products That Count is the world's largest nonprofit community, engaging 600,000+ product managers and Chief Product Officers (CPOs) united by a mission: to empower everyone to build products that truly count. In a world flooded with products, only a few ignite passion, deliver value at scale, and transform lives. Behind those exceptional products are visionary CPOs and high-performing product teams driving innovation at the most bleeding-edge companies. We recognize these trailblazers through our coveted Awards, accelerate careers from PM to the C-suite and beyond through daily best practices, and serve as the trusted advisor to nearly all Fortune 1000 CPOs. Our Corporate Alliance includes Walmart, Ford, Cisco, Johnson & Johnson, Amplitude, and more. The most admired product leaders across industries serve on our Advisory Council, guiding the future of product leadership. Together, we're shaping a future where every product counts. Learn more at productsthatcount.org
ABOUT MIGHTY CAPITAL
Mighty Capital is the VC firm that leverages the Product Alpha Effect™, a data-backed way to produce outliers by reading product signals from a 600,000-product-leader network. Founded in 2018 by SC Moatti, a product visionary and former Meta product leader, and Jennifer Vancini, an idea-to-IPO veteran of tech investing, we bring a differentiated edge to venture. Through Moatti's 600,000-strong Products That Count network of product leaders, we see trends before others do, giving us a proprietary advantage in sourcing, diligence, and post-investment value creation. Our early-stage B2B tech portfolio speaks for itself, with category leaders like Amplitude (NASDAQ:AMPL), Netskope (NASDAQ:NTSK) and Groq. Founders consistently call us the most value-add investor on their cap table, and use our global product ecosystem as a marketplace to accelerate time to revenue, scale, and exit. Learn more at Mighty.Capital.
Disclaimer: Certain statements in this release, including portfolio and liquidity references, are based on Mighty Capital's internal records and analysis as of February 14, 2026. Portfolio company examples are provided for illustrative purposes only and are not intended to represent all portfolio investments or outcomes. Past performance is not indicative of future results.
MEDIA CONTACT
Tess Pawlisch
608-333-9788
mighty.capital@needlepr.com
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