Talent leaders are being asked to understand the skills their people have, plan for how AI changes work, and govern the AI they adopt. Fosway’s latest research shows how far the market has to go.
Fosway Group has named Eightfold AI a Strategic Leader in the 2026 Fosway 9-Grid™ for Talent & People Success. Fosway, a European HR industry analyst, publishes the 9-Grid™ as its independent analysis of the talent and people success market in EMEA.
It follows the Strategic Leader placement Eightfold earned in the 2026 Fosway 9-Grid™ for Talent Acquisition earlier this year. The same talent intelligence that helps organizations hire the right people also helps them develop and deploy the talent they already have.
How the Fosway 9-Grid™ evaluates providers
The Fosway 9-Grid™ is a five-dimensional model that assesses providers on Performance, Potential, Market Presence, Total Cost of Ownership, and Trajectory. It draws on Fosway’s Corporate Research Network of more than 250 organizations.
The Talent & People Success grid covers the systems organizations use to grow, engage, and keep their workforce. That includes skills and career development, internal mobility, performance, recognition, and employee experience.
In Fosway’s model, Strategic Leaders provide a rich suite of capability across a broad scope of features. They have the sophistication to meet the needs of complex, enterprise-scale customers, along with strong market performance and customer advocacy.
Why this placement matters
We see this placement as validation of a long-held belief: skills intelligence belongs at the center of workforce strategy. Fosway’s 2026 research points the same way: in what it describes as an otherwise stagnating market, the most dramatic vendor growth is in talent intelligence and workforce transformation.
Five shifts from the 2026 report, and where Eightfold stands
Skills ambition is outpacing skills reality. Fosway finds that 62% of buyers are committed to becoming a skills-based organization, but only 17% say they are one today. Skills inferred from live work signals can help close that gap faster than a manual taxonomy project.
Tasks come first, skills second. Fosway is clear that understanding AI disruption is “about tasks first and skills second,” and that strategic workforce intelligence is now a top HR priority. We agree. The organizations that win will model which work AI absorbs, then move their people toward more impactful work. Eightfold helps leaders see the potential in their current workforce and plan for that shift with the people they already have.
AI adoption has doubled, but the hardest decisions still run at human speed. Fosway reports AI adoption in talent and people success rose from fewer than one in five organizations in 2025 to around two in five in 2026. Yet fewer than 17% use AI for skills today, and only 10% for strategic workforce planning. That leaves the decisions that most shape the future workforce, such as who to develop, redeploy, or hire, largely without AI support. That’s where talent intelligence can make the biggest difference.
Governance is now a buying requirement. With the EU AI Act phasing in, Fosway says AI compliance, auditable workflows, and responsible AI use have become a minimum requirement for HR buyers. Eightfold was built with that in mind: recommendations designed to be explainable, controls that help reduce bias, and people who make the final decisions.
Interoperability is rising on buyers’ shortlists. Fosway notes that secure AI interoperability through MCP (Model Context Protocol) is now potentially a non-negotiable feature for future HR system selections. Eightfold layers talent intelligence on top of the HCM and HR systems organizations already run, and TalentForge opens the platform to builders.
Skills intelligence at the core of people success
Eightfold Talent Management helps organizations grow, retain, and redeploy the workforce they already have. A living Skills Graph maps how people, skills, roles, and career paths connect, so organizations can fill roles from within, give every employee a visible path to grow, and build a workforce that’s ready for what comes next. And because Eightfold Talent Management runs on the same models as Eightfold Talent Acquisition, internal moves and external hires draw on one shared understanding of skills.
The Eightfold Talent Intelligence Platform brings together three layers of intelligence: Foundational Intelligence from leading generalist AI models, Enterprise Intelligence from each organization’s own talent and business data, and Domain Intelligence built on more than one billion career profiles. For people success, that means skills inferred from real work instead of self-reported profiles, personalized career paths and internal opportunities for every employee, development plans tied to business needs, and successor pools for critical roles.
“Organizations can’t plan for how AI will change work until they can see the work their people do today and the skills they bring to it,” said Varun Kacholia, Co-founder and CTO at Eightfold AI. “Eightfold builds that picture from real work signals and turns it into clear paths for every employee to grow and move internally. Our agents do the analysis at scale, and the platform gets sharper with every move an organization makes, while managers and talent leaders make the decisions. We’re honored that Fosway has recognized Eightfold as a Strategic Leader in Talent & People Success.”
What’s next for Eightfold customers
This year, Eightfold introduced new capabilities that extend this work. These product updates weren’t part of Fosway’s analysis:
- TalentForge: a build layer for creating custom talent applications on the Eightfold Talent Intelligence Platform.
- AI Interviewer: structured, skills-based interviews that evaluate every candidate with the same rigor, whether an organization is hiring one person or one million, and give hiring teams consistent insight to support their decisions.
From first interview to next career move
Being named a Strategic Leader in both the Talent Acquisition and Talent & People Success editions of the 2026 Fosway 9-Grid™ reflects what our customers already see: one talent intelligence foundation that supports people from their first interview to their next career move.
Request a demo to see how Eightfold Talent Management helps your organization grow, retain, and redeploy its people.
About the Fosway 9-Grid™
Fosway Group is Europe’s #1 HR industry analyst. The Fosway 9-Grid™ provides a unique assessment of the principal learning and talent supply options available to organisations in EMEA. The analysis is based on extensive independent research and insights from Fosway’s Corporate Research Network of over 250 organisations, including BP, HSBC, PwC, Sanofi, Shell, and Vodafone.
Visit the Fosway website at www.fosway.com for more information on Fosway Group’s research and services.