Despite a year of political and economic uncertainty, 2024 was a year of rapid development in artificial intelligence (AI), a topic that has remained at the forefront of strategic boardroom discussions, along with cybersecurity , cloud computing and robotics, among others. But with so many competing avenues for innovation, technology decision-makers have plenty of food for thought. With this in mind, Verdict looks at some of the top tech investing trends to watch in 2025.
The global AI market will be worth more than $1 trillion by 2030, according to estimates from research and analytics firm GlobalData. AI remained the most talked about technology trend in 2024 and will continue to attract investment and attention throughout the coming year despite challenges such as growing data center demands, increasing hardware costs and limited availability of graphics processing units, according to GlobalData’s 2025 technology forecast.
The report predicts that in 2025, many companies will choose to create their own AI systems using reduced language models (SLM) to serve specialized business functions. SLMs generally have 10 billion parameters, compared to three trillion for SLMs. the average LLM makes them cheaper and less vulnerable to data breaches because they can be deployed on-premises. SLMs like the new Hugging Face SmolLM family and Microsoft Phi-3 also present fewer legal risks regarding data management and copyright issues because licensing training materials is easier.
Agentic AI will also be a top priority for tech companies in 2025, GlobalData predicts. Agentic AI has memory and reasoning capacity beyond the data within an LLM. In April 2024, Alibaba Cloud launched a marketplace of more than 200 AI-powered agents for its DingTalk workplace communication platform. In September 2024, Microsoft and Cisco announced that AI agents would be central to their AI strategy.
AI chips will become a priority in 2025, with GlobalData predicting that the industry will invest heavily in new chip architectures and materials. Big Tech will continue to develop AI chips in-house as the semiconductor talent shortage worsens.
According to GlobalData forecasts, the global cloud computing market is expected to grow by 14.3%, from $821 billion in 2024 to $939 billion in 2025. Software as a Service is expected to generate 40.9% of the figure. total market revenue in 2025, while infrastructure -a-service and platform-as-a-service (will each contribute 12.5%).
According to GlobalData, communications platform as a service (CPaaS) will be a high growth area for the cloud, allowing businesses to integrate advanced communications features into their existing applications, streamlining the integration of their products or services . According to the company’s CPaaS competitive landscape assessment, Infobip, an omnichannel communications provider, and Twilio, a cloud communications company, are industry leaders. Market competition will continue to intensify in 2025 as more industries adopt this technology.
Additionally, cybersecurity will remain a top priority for all cloud providers in 2025, particularly as new data privacy regulations place increasing pressure on organizations to protect critical information, such as encryption .
The cybersecurity market will be worth $208.5 billion in 2025, up 10% from $188.8 billion in 2024, according to GlobalData. AI-based attacks will become increasingly sophisticated, with hacker groups likely to use malware-trained extended language models (LLMs) to target their attacks more effectively. GlobalData predicts a challenging year ahead for cybersecurity providers and users as they learn more about how to deal with AI-led attacks.
AI and ransomware as a service (RaaS) enable non-technical threat actors to launch sophisticated attacks. GlobalData predicts that the frequency of this type of attack will likely increase in 2025 and beyond.
Mandatory reporting on cyberattacks will increase and GlobalData predicts that all EU member states will adopt the bloc’s Network and Information Security Directive for stricter cybersecurity obligations by the end of 2025.
The demand for greater computing power and mandatory ESG reporting requirements will drive growth within the climate technology industry. According to the International Energy Agency, data center electricity demand alone is expected to increase 160% to 623 terawatt hours by 2030. This will push Big Tech toward nuclear energy solutions. Microsoft plans to reopen the Three Mile Island nuclear facility, while other data center hyperscalers have announced power supply deals with small modular reactor providers.
Additionally, GlobalData predicts that environmental monitoring tools will become indispensable as companies are increasingly required to meet ambitious net-zero emissions targets. These tools help businesses comply with regulations, address data sharing challenges, assess energy efficiency, and track emissions.
THE The robotics industry is experiencing a “Cambrian explosion” with the confluence of a number of factors, including the rapid development of cloud computing and AI. The global robotics industry will grow from $76 billion in 2023 to $218 billion in 2030, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 14% between 2023 and 2030.
Advancements in AI, machine learning, computer vision, and natural language processing are driving the adoption of autonomous robots, which is critical to the growth of the service robot market. Industrial robots are already used in the manufacturing sector to automate manufacturing processes, while service robots are designed as human helpers in domestic or non-industrial environments.
According to GlobalData, Chinese companies will continue to gain market share in 2025 thanks to strong domestic demand for robots and the country’s status as a key manufacturer.
“Five Tech Trends to Watch in 2025” was originally created and published by Verdicta brand owned by GlobalData.
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