Widest gap
Media & Entertainment
81
THE HYDER INDEX · AUGUST 2026
69
Significant Gap▼ 1 vs July
Industries are changing 2.1x faster than companies are responding.
The Hyder Index measures the Change-Response Gap: how fast industries are changing versus how fast companies are responding. 50 means they are even. Higher means the gap is wider. How we measure it →
Updated the first Tuesday of every month. Next edition: .
Biggest improvement
Media & Entertainment and Healthcare & MedTech
▼ 2
Healthcare improves for the second month in a row.
In the Red Zone
2 industries
Media & Entertainment, Technology & AI
August in two stories
For the first time, the index fell. Change did not slow down. Companies sped up. Fourteen of fifteen industries responded faster than they did in July. Netflix used AI in about 300 titles. State Farm made daily AI use part of its agents' contracts. Taco Bell's AI took orders at nearly 900 drive-thrus. The four biggest banks started building a shared digital-dollar system. Last month's edition said the gap closes when someone decides to close it. This month, a dozen industries decided. One catch: companies bought AI faster than they trained their people to use it.
Which industries are furthest behind?
Each industry gets a score from 0 to 100. 50 means companies are keeping pace with the change around them. Higher means change is winning.
0-25 Ahead of Change
26-50 Moderate Gap
51-75 Significant Gap
76-100 Critical Gap
Media & Entertainment
81
Critical Gap
Mover of the Month. This is still the widest gap on the index, but it got smaller for the first time. Netflix used AI tools in about 300 shows and movies this year. Warner Bros. Discovery added AI search to HBO Max. About 1 in 10 entertainment job postings in late June was for an AI role. The companies are finally putting AI to work, though Disney also cut several hundred more jobs along the way.
Change
88
Response
27
Delta
-2
Technology & AI
80
Critical Gap
The four biggest tech companies plan to spend about $600 billion this year on AI data centers and chips. The stock market split them into winners and losers. Microsoft and Amazon rose 8 to 9% because their AI spending is turning into real sales. Meta fell about 10%, and Alphabet spent more cash than it brought in for the first time since 2004. Big spending is no longer enough. Investors now want proof it is working.
Change
92
Response
32
Delta
-1
Legal & Professional Services
75
Significant Gap
Held steady. Norm, which runs a law firm powered by AI agents, reached a $1.2 billion value. Cooley, a major firm, launched a flat-fee service called Vanilla, the closest a big firm has come to changing how it charges because of AI. Most firms still bill by the hour, the same way they did before AI arrived.
Change
77
Response
27
Delta
0
Education & EdTech
73
Significant Gap
The response finally moved up from the lowest score on the index. The University of Maine System gave ChatGPT access to every student and employee. Cal State renewed its OpenAI deal across 22 campuses. Four more states now require school districts to write AI policies. Still, 92% of students have used AI for school, and 77% have never been taught how to use it well.
Change
64
Response
18
Delta
-1
Energy & Utilities
73
Significant Gap
The pressure kept rising: data centers added $6.3 billion to the cost of the biggest US power auction, and the grid came up short of its reliability target. Power companies moved fast too. NextEra's project backlog hit a record 35.1 gigawatts, Dominion has 53 gigawatts of data center demand in contract talks, and a $100 billion data center campus was announced in Kentucky. Both sides are moving quickly. Change is still ahead.
Change
84
Response
38
Delta
-1
HR & Future of Work
73
Significant Gap
Job cuts slowed down. June cuts fell 53% from May, and Europe delayed its rules on AI in hiring until late 2027. But companies still are not training their people: 55% of workers now use AI every week, and only a third got any AI training in the past six months.
Change
86
Response
40
Delta
-1
Healthcare & MedTech
72
Significant Gap
Better for the second month in a row. England's national health system followed last month's big rollout with a £10 billion, three-year AI program, including an AI triage tool in its patient app. Tempus paid $1.7 billion for Personalis, the biggest health tech deal of the summer. Once a health system decides to act, this industry keeps proving the gap can close.
Change
81
Response
37
Delta
-2
Retail & CPG
68
Significant Gap
Shoppers who arrived at retail sites from AI tools bought at a 40% higher rate than other visitors during Prime Day. A year ago, those shoppers bought at a lower rate. 74% of consumers say they have used an AI helper to shop, and Amazon says 350 million customers used its AI shopping assistant in the past year. Online retailers are moving fast. The companies that make the products barely mentioned any of this on their earnings calls.
Change
77
Response
41
Delta
-1
Insurance
66
Significant Gap
Travelers became the first big insurer to share AI results with investors, including claims that get handled from start to finish without a person. State Farm will require all 19,000 of its agents to use AI every day under new contracts. The behind-the-scenes systems are going in. The AI-first products customers say they want are still rare.
Change
64
Response
33
Delta
-1
Direct Sales & Franchising
66
Significant Gap
Taco Bell's AI assistant now takes orders at nearly 900 drive-thrus, and its parent company Yum is rolling one technology platform, Byte, across all its brands. The systems are getting smarter. The customer is the harder problem: Domino's had its softest quarter in a year, and McDonald's growth slowed as budgets tightened.
Change
58
Response
27
Delta
-1
Real Estate & Construction
66
Significant Gap
The only industry where the gap grew. Data center construction hit $81.5 billion this year, already more than all of last year, and construction robotics companies raised over $100 million in July. Home builders answered a slow market the old way, with discounts and incentives. Their earnings calls did not mention AI at all.
Change
52
Response
21
Delta
+1
Manufacturing & Industrial
65
Significant Gap
Factory activity hit its highest level since May 2022, and factories added workers for the first time in almost three years. Toyota, Bosch, and Hitachi committed billions to new US plants, and humanoid robots moved from demos into real orders. Change and response rose together, which is what keeping pace looks like. The cost: prices have now risen for 22 straight months.
Change
62
Response
32
Delta
0
Financial Services & FinTech
61
Significant Gap
JPMorgan's CEO said AI has already cut 30 to 40% of jobs in some parts of the bank. The four biggest US banks are also building a shared digital-dollar system to compete with stablecoins, the digital dollars issued by tech and payment companies. Banks are moving faster than most industries. Their newest competitors started out digital.
Change
68
Response
46
Delta
-1
Transportation & Logistics
60
Significant Gap
Waymo announced plans to bring driverless rides to four new cities in a single day. The bigger news came from the buyers: Atlas Energy, an oilfield company, committed to running 100 driverless trucks by mid-2027, and UPS finished its multi-year network overhaul and raised its outlook. When customers start buying self-driving fleets, the technology has left the test phase.
Change
54
Response
34
Delta
-1
Hospitality & Travel
52
Significant Gap
The World Cup raised room prices more than it filled rooms, and prices in host cities are now coming back down. Hilton, Marriott, and United still raised their forecasts, and Marriott and IHG both launched AI booking tools in the same week. This remains the closest race between change and response on the index.
Change
55
Response
51
Delta
-1
The big move
Media & Entertainment
81Red Zone
The widest gap the index has ever measured just got smaller. Netflix used AI tools in about 300 shows and movies this year and expects its ad business to roughly double. Warner Bros. Discovery added AI search and a short-video feed to HBO Max. About 1 in 10 entertainment job postings in late June was for an AI role. The score is still 81, so this is still the biggest gap we track, and Disney's third round of layoffs in seven months shows the change is still hard on people. But for five months this industry only moved in one direction. This month it turned.
Second story: Real Estate & Construction
66Orange Zone
The only industry where the gap grew. Data centers are rewriting construction demand, and construction robotics companies raised over $100 million in July. Home builders answered a slow market with discounts instead of new tools. Every other industry sped up this month. This one cut prices.
What moved the numbers this month
We track six signals of change. Here is what each one showed in July.
AI shopping went mainstream this summer. 74% of consumers say they have used an AI agent while shopping, and 55% say AI makes them shop more. During Prime Day, shoppers who arrived at retail sites from AI tools bought at a 40% higher rate than everyone else. A year ago, those shoppers bought at a 23% lower rate. AI went from a place people browse to a place people decide.
Sources: CI&T Retail Tech Report via Chain Store Age, July 23, 2026; Adobe Prime Day analysis, June 29, 2026
Job cut announcements slowed, with June down 53% from May. The bigger number came from a bank. JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon said AI has already reduced staff by 30 to 40% in some units. AI was the top stated reason for US job cuts for the fifth month in a row as US employers announced 33,429 July cuts, with AI cited in 10,970 of them and 112,713 so far this year. The cuts are moving out of press releases and into everyday budgets.
Sources: Challenger, Gray & Christmas H1 report, July 2, 2026; JPMorgan Q2 earnings call, July 14, 2026; TechCrunch layoff tracker, July 25, 2026
The four biggest tech companies said they will spend roughly $600 billion this year on AI data centers and chips. For the first time, the market graded them differently. Microsoft and Amazon rose 8 to 9% because their AI is producing revenue. Meta fell about 10%, and Alphabet spent more cash than it took in for the first time since 2004. Investors stopped rewarding big plans. They now pay for results.
Sources: Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta, and Amazon Q2 earnings calls, July 22 to 30, 2026; CNBC, July 28, 2026
Europe's AI rules got real on August 2. Companies can now be fined up to 15 million euros, or 3% of worldwide revenue, for breaking them. Chatbots must say they are AI, and AI-made content must be labeled. At the same time, Europe delayed its harder rules on AI in hiring and lending until December 2027. The rules covering AI that customers can see arrived first.
Sources: European Commission, EU AI Act application dates, August 2, 2026; Gibson Dunn client alert, May 27, 2026
98 high school students from all 50 states met in Boston and passed their own model AI law, 82 to 16. Their rules: teach AI skills from the first school device, no AI on graded tests, and no AI-written assignments. One student said, 'We missed the mark with social media and phones.' The school superintendents' association is sending the plan to 10,000 school leaders. The generation using AI the most is the one asking for rules.
Sources: NPR, July 30, 2026
The power grid sent the AI boom its first big bill. PJM, the largest US grid operator, hit the price ceiling in its yearly power auction for the third time in a row. Data centers caused $6.3 billion of the $16.4 billion cost, and the auction came up 6,831 megawatts short of its reliability target. Last month, rising power demand was a forecast. This month it was an invoice.
Sources: PJM capacity auction results, July 14, 2026; Utility Dive, July 20, 2026; Fortune, July 14, 2026
The Read
The index fell for the first time, from 70 to 69. Here is why that matters. Change did not slow down. The average Change Score across all 15 industries went up, from 70.1 to 70.8. What moved was the response. Fourteen of fifteen industries responded faster than last month, and the average Response Score rose three times as much as change did. The gap ratio tightened from 2.2x to 2.1x. We have not seen that before.
And this was real deployment, all the way through. England's health system turned one decision into a £10 billion program. Netflix used AI in about 300 titles. State Farm put daily AI use into its agent contracts. Taco Bell's AI now takes orders at nearly 900 drive-thrus. Marriott and IHG launched AI booking tools in the same week. Last month, one decision moved one industry's score. This month, decisions like that showed up all over the board.
The stock market noticed too. In one week of earnings reports, Microsoft and Amazon rose 8 to 9% because their AI spending is producing revenue. Meta fell about 10%, and Alphabet spent more cash than it took in for the first time since 2004. Investors are no longer paying for plans. They are paying for results. Response is now something the market prices.
Now the catch. Companies responded with money. Training lagged behind. 55% of workers use AI every day or every week, but only a third have had any AI training in the past six months. In schools, 92% of students have used AI, and 77% have never been taught how. HR was the one industry whose Response Score did not move. The tools are in. The training is not.
One point is one point, and September will tell us whether this was a turn or a pause. But if your company shipped something this summer, you have company. The next advantage goes to the companies that teach their people to use what they just bought. That part has barely started, which means it is still there for the taking.
Per the Hyder Index, the August 2026 reading is 69, and industries are changing 2.1x faster than companies are responding.
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