This month’s roundup includes AI updates across the spectrum of business, from enterprise-sized news to small business adoption metrics and planning for the year ahead — with a curious Reddit search update for good measure. Here’s your February 2026 AI in marketing update.
Market Leaders Focus on Enterprise AI Development
The likes of OpenAI and Anthropic — two generative AI leaders — increased their focus on enterprise AI tools, capabilities and services in February.
On OpenAI’s side, it announced multiyear partnerships with various consulting firms (including McKinsey & Co. and the Boston Consulting Group, among others) in a thrust for Frontier deployment. If you didn’t know, Frontier is its Enterprise-specific platform that “helps enterprises build, deploy, and manage AI agents that can do real work,” and was announced in early February 2026. These partnerships came less than a month later, signaling a strong focus on this agentic big business push.
On Anthropic’s side, the brand quietly unveiled new Claude capabilities and plugins in an X reply, revealing new tools across “HR, design, engineering ops, financial analysis, equity research, private equity, and wealth management”:
We've also created plugins across HR, design, engineering, ops, financial analysis, investment banking, equity research, private equity, and wealth management to help users see what's possible and start building their own.
— Claude (@claudeai) February 24, 2026
These moves signal a real and strong push for enterprise AI deployment across industries. There’s no telling yet just how much of an impact these moves will have on businesses and workers, but I’ve read a mix of intrigue and worry around the internet, depending on how you’re predisposed to AI and its growing role in our professional lives.
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Reddit Search Surged + New AI Features and Ads
I wrote about Reddit search nearing the end of February, its new AI capabilities, an earnings call that revealed 80 million search users at the end of 2025 and how it appears to be a growing competitor to traditional search engines. I also briefly mentioned its newly unveiled AI shopping carousel ads in search, but I think it’s worth a bit of a deeper dive here, because its concept is intriguing.
Based on the preview in their announcement post, Reddit search shopping carousels look similar to what you’ve come to expect from platforms like Google, but there’s a cool distinction in how they’re generated: Recommended products are based directly on discussions happening in product-focused subreddits.
A test of the feature is only available to “a small group of U.S.-based redditors” at the moment, so I can’t try it myself. But I take that to mean if a product comes highly recommended by redditors, it’s more likely to appear in those AI shopping carousels. So, AI ads based on merit and earning the goodwill of a community? I like the sound of that.
Here’s how Reddit explains it: “The carousel highlights products directly mentioned by users from real conversations on related posts and comments, and it includes details such as pricing and images,” and “This test is designed to make Reddit easier to navigate while keeping community perspectives at the center of the experience.”
As someone who leans on Reddit often for product recs and opinions, I’m curious to see how this feature takes shape. In my ideal world, I like the sound of earning top ad placements based on product quality and positive community opinion rather than which organizations can afford to fork out the most dough. I’m doubtful we’ll ever get there across today’s most popular ad platforms, but if Reddit can pull something similar off, that’s a win in my book!
A Vast Majority of Small Businesses Plan To Use AI Marketing Tools This Year
More than half (54 percent) of small business owners are already using AI tools, according to a Q1 2026 report from Constant Contact — with 27 percent planning to start this year. If that plays out how it’s reported, that’s 81 percent of small business owners who anticipate using AI to:
- Analyze trend data.
- Write copy for emails and other content.
- Create images and other visuals.
The report highlights economic uncertainty, namely inflation and rising costs, and by far the top concern for small businesses. For many, AI has offered a way to do more — perhaps more than they could otherwise afford — to keep their businesses going amid such market volatility.
Spring’s Ahead
AI initiatives and investment don’t seem to be slowing. Big brands are pushing for enterprise deployment and small businesses are picking up AI tools on their own volition amid growing economic uncertainty. It seems as though 2026 is shaping up to be a year of greater AI involvement in our work lives, and even our personal lives, with Reddit doubling down on its generative search and smart ad capabilities.
It’s not totally clear how everything will settle — it never is. But between spreading enterprise agentic AI deployment and small business adoption, I believe there’s probably a good mix of folks merely tolerating AI as it spreads, using tools out of necessity — whether cost- or resource-related or otherwise — and genuine curiosity about how it can ease everyday workloads or enhance shopping experiences.
