Additional commentary by Emily Lyons and Rob Lester Welcome back to AI Pulse — the blog series in which we dive into AI bot traffic insights across the Akamai network. This is our first post in 2026, and after tracking AI bot traffic over the past 12 months, it’s clear that the landscape shifted rapidly in 2025. In this post, we’re looking back at the AI traffic surge covered by our AI Pulse series in 2025 and exploring what it means as AI bots evolve into agents capable of acting on behalf of users. We’re also sharing our team’s predictions on how these trends will shape agentic commerce and digital experiences in 2026 for businesses. If you missed any of our earlier AI Pulse posts, you can catch up now. Reflecting on 2025 AI bot traffic trends In 2025, AI bot traffic across the Akamai network surged; it’s up more than 300% since we began tracking it.…