Sage Futures 2026 Highlights AI Opportunity for Partners

Sage is using its Futures 2026 announcements to sharpen the role of channel partners in AI adoption, with new tools, marketplace capabilities, and expanded PwC collaboration to help finance customers move from experimentation to practical deployment.

Channel Insider spoke with Nancy Sperry, Sage’s vice president of US partner sales, about the company’s continuing investment in its partner ecosystem as AI tooling expands and financial needs increase in complexity.

Sage expands AI capabilities for partners and finance customers

During its Sage Futures customer and partner conference this week in San Francisco, the company announced several new technology offerings and its acquisition of Doyen AI. 

To Sperry, product innovation at scale is now table stakes for any vendor working to advance customer outcomes alongside channel partners.

“I’m very excited about just the amount of new things Sage continues to create to provide new opportunities to partners,” Sperry said a few days before Sage Futures kicked off.

“I think we’ve come a long way, and we have several partners already building AI alongside us for our mutual customers,” she continued, adding that Sage has seen “a lot of acceleration” across the partner base over the course of the last year.

Channel Insider has spoken with Sperry previously about the opportunities Sage Intacct and other offerings give to a variety of partners. 

This year, the company has rolled out an upgrade to Sage Intacct that enhances it with a more structured, service-led approach, using AI-powered workflows and industry-specific templates and tools to streamline client onboarding and delivery. 

The company says these capabilities help advisory firms manage multiple client environments more consistently, reduce manual effort, and scale advisory services without increasing overhead.

Partners take on a bigger role in AI adoption

With this year’s announcements tied to Sage’s AI marketplace and Agent Builder capabilities, Sage is betting that its partners won’t be moving away from AI-driven services any time soon.

“I find that partners are very savvy and they’re excited to take on these opportunities in helping customers on their AI journeys,” said Sperry. 

“We’re providing the accelerant for our partners with things like Agent Builder. They can now contextualize AI for customers and enhance their value proposition in the market.”

That contextualization remains crucial for many business leaders from SMB up through the enterprise. As AI adoption continues to rise, questions around the ROI of deployments and the long-term success of leveraging AI tools have opened a new path for partners to go beyond integration services.

“We want to meet partners where they are, of course, but we want them to see us as a partner who is really committed to fueling their growth,” Sperry said.

PwC relationship adds governance and explainability focus

During Sage Futures 2026, the company also announced an extension of its work with global accounting and professional services firm PwC.

Sage is leaning on PwC as the lead partner for its “Beyond the Black Box” initiative, positioning the firm’s AI deployment experience and governance expertise as central to bringing explainable AI into finance workflows. 

The move likely won’t surprise most channel partners, who have seen demand for AI-related governance and security services steadily increase over the past few months.

The company cites PwC’s deployment of more than 240,000 Microsoft Copilot licenses, 4,000 custom GPTs, and 86% employee AI usage as evidence that PwC can help move AI from experimentation into daily business operations.

“PwC’s role is to build trust as technology reshapes how business decisions are made,” said Marco Amitrano, PwC UK Senior Partner. “This initiative with Sage reflects a shared ambition: to ensure AI innovation is grounded in the quality and transparency expected of market-leading finance systems.” 

Sage looks to tailor growth plans by partner

Sperry and the wider Sage team have spent the past week with partners and customers in San Francisco. Following the event, she told Channel Insider that her team will be focused on identifying growth opportunities for all partners.

“The focus for us following [Sage Futures] will be on understanding how we’re going to keep working together with our partners moving forward,” Sperry said. “We’ll have conversations centered around the top three things we can focus on with each partner to grow their businesses by delivering outcomes for our customers.”

To do that, she said, Sage will continue to identify which of its offerings best suit its partners’ unique needs and business opportunities.

“Our depth and breadth of offerings is really exciting, but we know that each of them doesn’t show up equally in every place with every partner,” said Sperry.