AI Summary: Investor relations has become more strategic in the first half of 2026. Market volatility, activism, evolving investor expectations and AI are reshaping the role of the IRO, expanding its influence across the business. Drawing on industry research and insights from experienced IR leaders, this report examines the trends defining the profession and outlines practical actions for the second half of the year.
THE VIEW AT MIDYEAR
If you asked an investor relations officer(IRO) how the first half of 2026 felt, you’d probably get some version of the same answer: relentless. Tariff volatility, geopolitical uncertainty, a resurgent activism environment, and the accelerating shift toward AI-assisted workflows have produced a profession that looks meaningfully different than it did 18 months ago.
This is our midyear stocktake on where IR stands: what shaped H1, built on conversations with IR leaders and the data that best captures the shifts underway, and what’s worth preparing for in H2.
THE STATE OF PLAY: WHERE IROS ARE RIGHT NOW
One theme came through consistently in our conversations with IROs this year: there has never been a more demanding time to be in investor relations.
That sentiment describes a function that has moved to the center of corporate strategy, expected to operate less like a communications desk and more like a strategic intelligence function. Boards and C-suites are treating IR as a strategic advisor, especially when volatility makes misunderstanding expensive. Today’s IROs are expected to interpret market signals, shape the equity narrative, advise leadership and help earn long-term investor confidence in an increasingly complex environment.
While the role of the IRO has evolved significantly, the underlying objective hasn’t. Helping the right investors understand the company’s long-term story remains at the heart of investor relations. As Tony Righetti, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations at Five9, puts it:
The goal for investors has not changed, they are still identifying companies that fit their investment thesis. What has shifted is the noise level. Market speed bleeds into investor communications and the “main thing” becomes convoluted. The IROs who are likely to win in 2027 are the ones who have resisted the urge to adjust their story to every audience and instead identified an investor base that genuinely understands the company.
– Tony Righetti, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations, Five9
And this reinforces one of the defining themes of H1: in a noisier market, clarity becomes a competitive advantage.
THE TRENDS THAT DEFINED H1 2026
AI Has Moved From Curiosity to Capability
AI has quickly moved beyond experimentation to becoming a strategic priority for IR teams. Nasdaq’s 2026 Global IR Issuer Pulse found that 51% of IR professionals have embedded AI into their processes.
IROs are exploring where it adds the most value: summarizing competitive earnings transcripts, preparing Q&A ahead of earnings, building briefing books, getting executives ready for investor meetings, strengthening investor targeting and uncovering insights that lead to better investor engagement.
The defining trend in investor relations during the first half of 2026 has been the shift from using AI as a tactical tool to embedding it into core workflows. Leading IR teams are using AI to enhance investor engagement, market intelligence, and communications while improving efficiency. At the same time, the rise of AI-generated content has increased the need for human oversight to ensure accuracy and prevent misinformation. Success in the second half of 2026 will come from balancing the power of AI with the judgment and experience of skilled IR professionals.
– Edward Miller F. CIRI
VP Investor Relations & Capital Markets Lead, Pelican PR
This shift is also redefining what IROs expect from their technology. Instead of acting as systems of record, IR platforms are becoming systems of intelligence that understand context, surface relevant insights and help teams move faster.
Storytelling Has Become the Defining Skill
Narrative continues to be one of the defining skills for today’s IRO, and that reflects how investor research is evolving. That tracks with how investors consume information today: an IRO’s messaging is increasingly processed and re-presented by AI before it reaches its final audience, well before a human reads the underlying disclosure.
Our Six Hats research captures this shift and what this means for IROs. As Katharine Sutton, Head of Investor Relations at Kenmare Resources plc, put it:
Investor relations officers aren’t just custodians of numbers — we must be storytellers who turn data into a narrative that investors can believe in and follow.
– Katharine Sutton, Head of Investor Relations at Kenmare Resources plc
This shift amounts to a move toward proof-backed narrative: equity stories grounded in measurable evidence, where investors can see a company understands its own performance drivers and can explain them plainly. In many cases, share-price volatility reflects a widening gap between investor expectations and management’s forward narrative, and closing that gap falls on the IRO.
Shareholder Activism Has Returned to the Foreground
Activism is back and running at pace. Shareholder activism remains firmly focused on strategic change. Lazard’s H1 2026 Review of Shareholder Activism found that the first half of 2026 was the busiest six-month period on record, with 184 new activist campaigns globally, up 20% year over year.
For IROs, that’s meant building proactive defense capabilities that weren’t always core to the role, and that defense work is increasingly happening well before proxy season starts.
The most effective activism defence starts long before there is an activist shareholder knocking on the door. Companies that earn the support of significant institutional shareholders through regular engagement with their stewardship teams are in a fundamentally better position when pressure arrives.
– Harvard Law School Corporate Governance Forum
ESG Is Being Reframed
Sustainability hasn’t disappeared from the investor agenda, but the conversation is becoming more focused on financial materiality. In the US, the SEC’s proposed rescission of its climate disclosure rule signals a return to a materiality-based approach to corporate reporting. At the same time, Europe has simplified its sustainability reporting requirements.
One way to think about this is as a shift from “brand ESG,” the public-facing sustainability narrative, to “enterprise ESG,” where the focus is increasingly on financially material sustainability issues.
Public sustainability commitments still matter, but investor conversations are increasingly centered on governance, operational resilience, capital allocation and other sustainability issues that have a clear financial impact.
For IROs, the challenge is becoming less about reporting everything and more about clearly articulating the sustainability factors that are genuinely material to the business.
GEARING UP FOR H2
The second half is shaping up around a few clear pressures: an active proxy and activism environment, a guidance conversation still adjusting to macro uncertainty, IR teams recalibrating where they invest engagement time, and the growing question of how stretched teams, and leadership, get tested under pressure.
Stewardship and Activism Readiness
The 2026 proxy season highlighted how quickly the voting ecosystem is changing. Several major asset managers have reorganized their stewardship functions, resulting in more customized and less standardized voting approaches. For issuers, that means engagement is becoming more fragmented, and understanding who sets policy, who owns the relationship and who makes the final voting decision is increasingly important.
Activist campaigns also continue to focus heavily on strategy, M&A and capital allocation. At the same time, withhold and “vote no” campaigns are becoming an increasingly important way to pressure boards without launching a full proxy contest.
Our recent conversations on activism reinforced another important point: the AGM isn’t where activism starts, and it rarely ends there. As an IR leader put it in our Confessions of an IRO:
If you think the AGM is your battleground, think again. An activist gets in it for the very long term. You might win one AGM, but there is at least a two-to-three-year runway where you still need to be fighting.
– Irina Zhurba, Director of Investor Relations, Redcare Pharmacy
For H2, IR teams could benefit from:
- Reviewing how your largest shareholders make voting decisions today, including where stewardship teams, portfolio managers and proxy advisers each play a role.
- Pressure-testing the equity story through an activist’s lens. What would be the strongest argument against your strategy, capital allocation or M&A approach, and how would you respond with evidence?
- Treating activism preparedness as an ongoing discipline, instead of a proxy-season exercise. Build relationships with key shareholders, address vulnerabilities early and align the board and executive team well before concerns become public.
Macro & Guidance Recalibration
Trade policy uncertainty and geopolitical fragmentation haven’t resolved so much as become the operating backdrop for H2. That’s changing how many sophisticated issuers approach guidance: single-point forecasts are giving way to ranges and scenario-based sensitivities that can absorb a wider band of outcomes without forcing a mid-quarter reset.
The following could help with earnings in H2:
- Run two narratives into the quarter, not one: a base case and a tariff-shock case, and rehearse the pivot between them so it doesn’t read as reactive live on the call.
- Check exposure against the specific input costs or FX pairs sell-side models are already using for peers; if a peer’s model has a scenario the company hasn’t addressed, that’s the first analyst question.
- Decide before the quarter closes which sensitivity numbers go in the deck versus stay reserved for Q&A, the specificity of the answer signals command of the numbers either way.
Investor Engagement Priorities
Engagement priorities are consolidating around a few themes: deepening in-person relationships after several years of more virtual engagement, sharpening the equity narrative for an audience that increasingly reads it through AI summarization first, and directing outreach toward the funds where conviction is genuinely movable rather than spreading coverage evenly.
AI can be a game changer here:
- Deploy AI agents to continuously monitor shareholder activity and engagement signals, alerting your team when investor behavior suggests it’s time to reach out and to hyper-personalize communication.
- Prioritize investors using AI-powered targeting rather than static screening criteria, combining ownership data, engagement history and market signals to focus time where conviction is most likely to change.
- Run the equity narrative through an AI summarizer the way an analyst or portfolio manager would see it. If the summary doesn’t reflect the story you want investors to take away, that’s the messaging to refine.
Board & Executive Readiness
Activism and macro volatility both mean the CEO and CFO are fielding harder questions with less warning than a year ago. Preparation is important, but so is ensuring the CEO, CFO, board and IR team respond with the same narrative when pressure builds.
IROs can help leaders prep effectively by:
- Running regular scenario-based Q&A sessions with the CEO and CFO, testing the toughest questions around strategy, capital allocation, guidance and activist criticism before they arise.
- Building dynamic executive briefing books that combine investor history, recent engagement, ownership changes and market context into a single view before every meeting.
- Giving the board a concise version of the equity story they can confidently explain, ensuring directors, executives and IR are reinforcing the same narrative.
- Reviewing governance and decision-making processes ahead of high-pressure moments, ensuring roles, responsibilities and escalation paths are clear before they are needed.
TECHNOLOGY TRENDS RESHAPING THE IR FUNCTION
Five shifts are reshaping the technology side of the IR function this year, spanning workflow automation, data strategy, and how companies show up in AI-driven research.
AI in the Core Workflow
AI is reshaping the analytical work of investor relations, helping teams surface market intelligence, strengthen the equity narrative and prepare more effectively for high-impact investor conversations.
AI is creating real value in the research and drafting layers: synthesizing sell-side notes and accelerating the prep cycle. Where the industry is overestimating its impact is in relationship management. The investor relationship is still a human one, and no amount of AI changes what happens in the room.
– Tony Righetti, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations, Five9
That distinction is becoming increasingly important. AI can strengthen the work that leads up to an investor conversation, but credibility, trust and long-term relationships are still earned in the room.
The biggest opportunities heading into H2 include:
- Research: Synthesize thousands of pages of analyst, peer and market information into actionable insights.
- Preparation: Simulate difficult investor questions and test management responses ahead of key events.
- Communication: Draft briefing materials, Q&A and talking points as a starting point for human review.
- Strategic advice: Surfacing strategic questions or emerging risks that deserve management attention before they become recurring investor concerns.
- Continuous learning: Analyze historical investor interactions to identify recurring concerns and opportunities to strengthen the equity story.
Visibility in an AI-First Research Environment
When institutional investors research companies through AI tools, the quality of the answer depends on whether IR content is structured for machines to read and summarize accurately. Content that isn’t AI-readable leaves the company’s story to be shaped by whoever’s content is most accessible, rather than the company itself.
Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) is becoming an important extension of digital IR. It focuses on structuring website content so AI-powered search and answer engines can accurately retrieve, interpret and cite a company’s own information. That includes using clear information architecture, structured data such as schema markup and content formats that make key disclosures easier for AI systems to understand.
Your AEO playbook should include:
- Auditing your IR site content and disclosures for structured data, clear headings, and FAQ-style formatting that AI tools can parse.
- Identifying where a competitor’s or an aggregator’s content currently outranks your company’s own in AI-generated answers, and work toward closing that gap.
- Treating AEO as a standing workstream rather than a one-time project; refresh it as the underlying AI models change.
Connected Data Across the IR Stack
IR teams are consolidating what used to be separate systems: CRM, ownership and surveillance data, and website engagement analytics, into a single connected view instead of working from disconnected dashboards.
Seeing who’s visiting the IR site, downloading materials, and buying the stock in one place changes what “engaged investor” actually means.
Review your tech stack and think about:
- Connecting relationship data, shareholder intelligence and digital touchpoints to understand investor activity in context.
- Breaking down data silos so teams can work from one source of truth instead of multiple disconnected systems.
- Turn fragmented signals into actionable intelligence, so every decision is driven by evidence instead of instinct.
Agentic AI Brings Continuous Intelligence
The first wave of AI helped IROs find answers faster. The next wave helps them recognize what has changed.
Rather than waiting for someone to ask a question, agents like Q by Q4, continuously monitor investor activity, ownership changes, analyst commentary and market developments, surfacing meaningful changes as they happen. The result is a more proactive IR function, where teams spend less time searching for information and more time deciding what to do next.
As these capabilities mature, IROs are using agents to:
- Replace manual monitoring with a continuous one of analyst and market developments, surfacing the changes that genuinely warrant attention.
- Detect emerging patterns across multiple signals, helping teams identify opportunities or risks earlier than traditional monitoring approaches.
- Deliver ongoing intelligence to executives, ensuring investor meetings, board discussions and earnings decisions begin with the latest context.
- Streamline their day-to-days with recurring workflows like:
- “Every Monday, show me the five investor meetings I should prepare for this week.”
- “Alert me when one of my top 20 shareholders changes their osition.”
- “Every Friday, send me a summary of analyst note changes across my peer group.”
- “Refresh my earnings dashboard every morning with peer announcements, analyst commentary and the latest consensus changes.”
Human Oversight & Data Governance
AI is making it easier to create content. It’s also raising the bar for governance. As AI becomes embedded across IR workflows, the question is not so much around application of AI, but how to use it responsibly. Many organizations are pairing AI adoption with clear governance, trusted data sources and defined accountability.
Leading teams are:
- Establishing clear AI governance policies, defining where AI can be used, where human approval is required and how legal, compliance and IR responsibilities are shared.
- Embedding human review into every high-impact communication, ensuring earnings materials, investor presentations and market disclosures remain accurate, consistent and aligned with regulatory requirements.
- Grounding AI in trusted internal knowledge, using approved company documents and verified data sources rather than relying on open-ended prompts or publicly available information.
- Maintaining auditable workflows, so AI-generated insights, recommendations and content can be traced, reviewed and validated before reaching investors or regulators.
- Regularly reviewing AI outputs for bias, hallucinations and disclosure risk, recognizing that accountability ultimately remains with the company, not the technology.
CLOSING THOUGHTS
The IR profession at the halfway mark of 2026 is under real pressure: activism, macro complexity, the technology adoption curve, and a faster pace of decision-making.
The opportunities are just as real. AI is creating leverage for teams that deploy it thoughtfully, in-person engagement is restoring relationship depth, and investors who came through this year’s volatility intact are looking for management teams they can trust, which is exactly what a well-run IR program builds.
The bar is high. The good news is that today’s IRO is better equipped than ever to meet it, with stronger data, better technology and a more influential seat at the table.
