AI & machine learning trends 2026
Which AI tools, frameworks and models are getting attention, which are being adopted, and which employers are actually hiring for.
Key insights
The most significant AI/ML market signals in 2026.
Heat score of 76.7, driven by 16 GitHub trending repos and 940 Hacker News points. Package downloads grew 61.9%. But its hiring score is 0: lots of attention, but no tracked job postings yet.
These share the top AI hiring score (88.5/100), each from 11 tracked job postings. For production ML and LLM roles, these are the skills employers name. Hiring AI/ML developers →
Anthropic SDK npm downloads grew 72.2% and OpenAI SDK npm downloads grew 33.7% quarter over quarter (last 13 weeks vs the prior 13). Teams are wiring models into products, not just experimenting.
Pinecone (144.9%), Weaviate (137.6%), Qdrant (123.3%), Milvus (120.3%) year over year on DB-Engines. AI embedding workloads are creating demand for specialised storage. Vector databases →
AI/ML trend, heat and hiring scores
Each score is out of 100, relative to the 36 technologies we track. How scores work.
Trend score (composite)
Heat, adoption, hiring and durability combined.
Heat
GitHub trending, Hacker News points and mentions: the buzz right now.
Hiring
Which AI technologies employers are actively hiring for. Only technologies with a non-zero score are shown.
AI SDK downloads
npm downloads for the main LLM SDKs and frameworks.
Total downloads
Sum of weekly downloads, 2025-W11 to 2026-W11.
Latest weekly downloads
Most recent week with download data for each package.
| Package | Registry | Downloads (2025-W11 to 2026-W11) | Latest week | Year growth | Quarter growth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| OpenAI SDK | npm | 364.7M | 6.5M | +324% | +33.7% |
| Anthropic SDK | npm | 144.3M | 3.7M | +608% | +72.2% |
| LangChain | npm | 59.4M | 847K | +191% | – |
Year growth compares the first four tracked weeks with the last four. Quarter growth compares the last 13 weeks with the prior 13. We also track the PyPI packages for PyTorch, Transformers, LlamaIndex and the OpenAI, Anthropic and LangChain Python clients, but no download data was available for them in this period, so they are omitted.
AI/ML in Hacker News hiring posts
How often AI and machine learning show up in “Who’s Hiring” threads over time.
AI/ML mentions per sampled month
“Who’s Hiring” posts mentioning AI or machine learning: 21,069 across 36 sampled months between 2015-07 and 2025-02.
A typical sampled month in 2015 had about 604 AI/ML mentions; in 2025 it was 341. Hacker News hiring volume fell across every technology over this period, so read this as AI/ML’s path relative to the platform, not as falling AI demand. Compare it with other stacks in our hiring trends analysis.
The number of sampled months differs by year (shown in brackets), and 2021–2022 were not sampled, so we show the average per sampled month rather than yearly totals.
All 13 AI/ML technologies
Ranked by composite trend score. Click a column to sort.
| Technology | Trend | Heat | Adoption | Hiring | Durability | Confidence | What drives the score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Code Hype only AI tooling |
38.5 | 76.7 | 21.1 | 0.0 | 35.3 | Medium | GitHub trending repos: 16; Hacker News mentions: 2 (940 points); Package growth signal: 61.9% Sources: GitHub, Hacker News, npm/PyPI |
| OpenClaw AI tooling |
27.2 | 50.0 | 17.3 | 0.0 | 30.3 | Low | GitHub trending repos: 24 Sources: GitHub |
| LangChain Agent framework |
24.4 | 0.8 | 12.0 | 88.5 | 19.1 | High | Package growth signal: 51.5%; Job postings tracked: 11 Sources: GitHub, Stack Overflow, npm/PyPI, Job boards, Indeed |
| PyTorch AI framework |
22.6 | 0.8 | 8.0 | 88.5 | 14.6 | High | Job postings tracked: 11 Sources: GitHub, Stack Overflow, Job boards, Indeed |
| MCP AI tooling |
22.3 | 31.7 | 20.0 | 0.0 | 35.0 | Low | GitHub trending repos: 13 Sources: GitHub |
| Gemini AI model |
19.9 | 27.9 | 18.1 | 0.0 | 31.6 | Low | GitHub trending repos: 11 Sources: GitHub |
| OpenAI API AI tooling |
18.8 | 0.8 | 1.2 | 88.5 | 3.1 | Medium | Package growth signal: 42.0%; Job postings tracked: 11 Sources: Stack Overflow, npm/PyPI, Job boards, Indeed |
| RAG AI tooling |
8.0 | 15.6 | 4.5 | 0.0 | 7.8 | Low | GitHub trending repos: 6 Sources: GitHub |
| Ollama AI tooling |
8.0 | 0.8 | 13.8 | 0.0 | 24.1 | Low | Matched GitHub repos: ollama/ollama Sources: GitHub |
| Vector Databases Vector database |
5.7 | 0.8 | 9.6 | 0.0 | 16.8 | Low | Matched GitHub repos: chroma-core/chroma, qdrant/qdrant Sources: GitHub |
| LLMOps AI tooling |
1.5 | 0.8 | 2.1 | 0.0 | 3.7 | Low | Matched GitHub repos: langfuse/langfuse Sources: GitHub |
| Mythos AI tooling |
0.7 | 0.8 | 0.8 | 0.0 | 1.4 | Low | Matched GitHub repos: kyegomez/OpenMythos Sources: GitHub |
| Pinecone Vector database |
0.3 | 0.8 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.1 | Low | Matched GitHub repos: pinecone-io/pinecone-python-client Sources: GitHub |
Hiring scores are based on small samples of tracked job postings; treat them as directional.
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