Corporate buyers don’t double down on their research efforts for no reason. In January 2026, this was the number of companies actively evaluating project and task management platforms.
According to Techtelligence data, demand for PTM platforms has increased by more than 89% compared to 2025 baseline. This is a sign of the market collectively deciding that now is the time to make a decision.
Finding reasons for the move is not difficult. monday.com, Asana, and Smartsheet all launched in 2026 after a series of major AI promises in the second half of last year: a new architecture, new agents, and a new philosophy about what task management software should actually do.
Here’s our evaluation of each location:
Monday.com: Broad AI across proven platforms
monday.com ended fiscal 2025 with 250,000 customers across task management, CRM, services and development products and $1.232 billion in revenue, up 27% year-over-year.
It is the largest of the three suppliers in terms of revenue and number of customers, and scale matters in corporate procurement. This means a company with a mature integrated ecosystem, a large implementation community, and the commercial stability to support long-term contracts.
AI strategy applies across platforms. A single AI layer runs across all products to handle task creation, assignment, summarization, and workflow automation without users having to switch contexts. The ambition is for AI to become an invisible infrastructure rather than a separate set of capabilities. At its Partner Summit in Prague this month, monday.com confirmed that AI adoption has now become a commercial priority, with the company encouraging partners to include AI capabilities into customer deployments.
A possible limitation is depth. monday.com’s AI performs well at the process layer (automating routine tasks, generating summaries, and routing tasks), but the company has yet to produce substantive evidence that AI drives measurable results at the enterprise level beyond improved efficiency. For organizations where evaluation criteria extend to strategic impact, this gap is worth investigating.
Asana: The Clearest AI Philosophy with a Warning for Leadership
Asana’s product story is arguably the most considered of the three.
AI frameworks are built around context, checkpoints, and control. This is an intentional response to enterprise concerns about AI operating without governance within sensitive project environments.
This framework powers AI Teammates, the headline feature of Asana’s fall 2025 release. AI agents receive task assignments, act on them, and report back within existing team channels just like any other team member. In beta in November 2025, AI Teammates will encompass campaign management, product launch, and strategic planning workflows.
The same release included AI Risk Reporting (an automated weekly assessment that surfaces project distractions before they impact the schedule), multilingual semantic search, and a Timesheet and Budget add-on that leverages Asana for financial resource management. Amazon Q Business integration extends AI workflows to third-party enterprise data. Taken together, this is a consistent luxury market push.
What you need to pay attention to is leadership. In March 2025, co-founder Dustin Moskovitz announced that he was resigning. Dan Rogers, previously an employee of ServiceNow and Rubrik, assumed the role on July 21, while Moskovitz remained chairman of the board. The products Asana sells today reflect Moskovitz’s vision. Rogers has not yet articulated a clear strategic direction, and for corporate buyers taking a multi-year view, this is a variable to consider.
Smartsheet: Enterprise level, delivery schedule confirmation
The starting point of Smartsheet is different from the other two sheets.
85% of Fortune 500 companies are already using this platform. In other words, for many large companies, the question is not whether to adopt Smartsheet, but how much to expand.
Smartsheet debuted Intelligent Work Management, a platform architecture built on the proprietary Smartsheet Knowledge Graph, at the ENGAGE event in November 2025. Instead of applying AI generically, Knowledge Graph allows Smartsheet’s AI to access each organization’s specific project records, terminology, and workflows. The practical intent is for AI to reflect the circumstances of a specific enterprise, rather than to generate generic results. Building on this foundation, Smart Assist, Smart Flows, Smart Columns, and Smart Agents continuously monitor project progress and flag risks without prompting. Smart Hub, a centralized control panel, is scheduled to be released in late 2026.
The PwC UK partnership, announced in January 2025, further strengthens the corporate dimension. PwC is making Smartsheet a standard part of its innovation efforts across its public sector and financial services clients. If the Big 4 firms default to the platform when serving clients, the procurement dynamics will change significantly. Companies encounter Smartsheet on an established basis rather than as a shortlisted vendor.
The danger is timing. Several key features, such as Smart Agents, Smart Flows, and Smart Columns, remain in early adopter or private beta as of November 2025, and the portfolio is targeting general release in Q1 2026. The architecture is reliable. Whether the delivery matches the presentation is a question the short-term evaluator should ask.
1 number to watch
Excluding the three platform comparisons, Techtelligence recorded a +2,347% intent spike for low-code workflow automation platform Nintex in the same January period. During the same period, productivity and automation intentions increased by 193%. Some business buyers don’t choose between these three platforms. They are asking whether workflow automation can more directly address their needs. It’s worth answering these questions before choosing a project management tool.
Need more help making the most of your options? Check out our guide Maximize ROI from your collaborative workplace management system.