As companies, investors and regulators celebrate the new year, changes are already underway for the 2026 proxy season:

• The Wall Street Journal has reported that JPMorgan Chase’s asset-management unit is cutting ties with proxy advisory firms and will use an internal artificial-intelligence-powered platform called Proxy IQ to assist on U.S. company votes. The bank will utilize Proxy IQ to manage voting, as well as analyze data for more than 3,000 annual company meetings and provide recommendations to portfolio managers, replacing the typical roles of ISS and Glass Lewis. This development comes after President Trump recently issued an Executive Order titled “Protecting American Investors From Foreign-Owned and Politically Motivated Proxy Advisors,” which targets proxy advisory firms as “regularly us[ing] their substantial power to advance and prioritize radical politically-motivated agendas.”

While the use of AI in proxy voting is in its nascent stages, we can expect to see more investors developing their own internal AI models for data analysis and voting. There may also be opportunities for companies to use AI to better engage with investors and predict voting outcomes.

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