[ad_1]
2024 represented a year of discovery for many technology companies, particularly those looking for ways to ride the wave of AI investments. The adoption of new AI application layers and AI’s influence on other key verticals is expected to be front and center in 2025. We also see regulatory framework and security governance playing a crucial role as applications begin to become more mainstream. With the help of AlphaSense expert interviews, we have identified the key emerging themes for 2025. Below, we share each theme and emphasize areas that have the potential to inflect in the coming months.
Generative AI
1. Agentic AI Emerges as a Key Theme
Agentic AI has quickly sprouted up as a new megatrend following generative AI, with our experts citing conservative estimates of a $200-400 billion market opportunity. AI agents represent a paradigm shift from co-pilots, which may stretch the capabilities of AI to new limits.
They are active and autonomous in response to task-oriented problems, capable of taking action without human input. Software development, customer service, data analysis, and sales use cases have shown promise in both tangible ROI and productivity gains. While use cases vary, our experts predict that areas such as call centers and e-commerce are ripe for aggressive early development and adoption.
The adoption of agentic AI is in its early stages, so certain strategic questions remain unanswered. First, the relationship between agentic AI and pricing models is complex, with traditional seat-based pricing facing challenges in AI-driven environments. As with prior iterations of AI applications, security risk and governance remain top of mind for agentic AI, so building trust is key to broad adoption. As systems mature and become more advanced, the ability to mitigate misconduct or breaches will be critical.
One additional hurdle is the capex requirements. Large enterprise customers have already made significant investments in AI, and may be reluctant to continue spending at elevated levels without clear evidence of ROI. All in, agentic AI represents a path to increased monetization from consumers and enterprises, which would then likely propel the path to further industry expansion.
2. AI Infrastructure
At AlphaSense, we are seeing evidence that companies and governments continue to rush build plans for data center capacity, with the promise of AI compute facilities powering future technology leads. We expect that edge AI will also drive an increased need for infrastructure spend.
Meanwhile, companies like Taiwan Semiconductor (TSMC) are rushing to stay at the leading edge of semiconductor manufacturing to support these efforts. CoWoS (Chip-on-Wafer-on-Substrate) continues to be a critical differentiating technology for advanced packaging, utilized to develop high-performance AI chips. Though capacity is expected to grow 60% CAGR over the next few years, TSMC is currently in supply-demand imbalance for CoWoS solutions, with companies like Apple and Nvidia soaking up a large majority of current capacity.
AI cloud spending is expected to remain elevated for Nvidia GPUs in particular, with major tech companies projected to spend at least $250 billion in capex in 2025. AlphaSense experts expect Nvidia to retain the market lead but see the opportunity for new entrants to find success with infrastructure builds, including Google and Amazon, which are bringing capacity in-house.
As AI agents and other applications require inference capabilities, companies such as Qualcomm and Broadcom stand to benefit from semiconductor spend, while memory, optical, networking, switching, and servers are likely to see a boost in 2025. According to Dell’Oro Group, switching alone has reached an all-time high this month, driven solely by AI data center buildouts.
3. AI at the Edge & Consumer Driven AI
Consumer-driven AI applications such as hardware, video generation, and gaming are all areas that will likely see acceleration in 2025. Smartphones and PCs appear to be on the cusp of a major refresh, with incorporation of AI tools expected in the coming year.
While still in its early days, Apple’s AI rollout over the next few months could kickstart a mobile supercycle, with AI-driven apps being built by developers looking to gain a foothold using the Apple Intelligence platform. With an install base of 2 billion iOS devices and 1.5 billion iPhones, product introductions could unlock this upgrade cycle, ultimately leading to more data running through the edge, as Siri, image enhancements, and ChatGPT integration look to be early killer apps. A successful Apple refresh cycle would likely cause a domino effect and move AI traffic further towards the edge. Additionally AR and VR technologies are likely to become more affordable and accessible, though consumer adoption remains unproven.
Beyond consumer applications, the impact of integrating AI into devices extends to industries such as healthcare and industrials, with the IoT (Internet of Things) market looking to reach almost $2 trillion by 2030. Incorporating AI chips into equipment and communications offers substantial benefits and efficiencies to corporations that were previously untapped by technology innovation.
Related Reading: AI at the Edge
4. Data Analytics and Security
AI is transforming the way data is processed and analyzed, enabling faster summarization of massive amounts of data and compelling companies to improve the quality of their data and upgrade existing systems. Tasks can now be accomplished much more quickly using AI. This advancement is creating new market potential for data warehouse providers, such as Snowflake and Databricks, as AI is driving the need for new forms of data storage and archiving.
While the security software sector is not an emerging trend, significant shifts are happening as AI infiltrates the industry, with experts citing more advanced solutions coming to market in 2025. In particular, cloud security will be a major focus. Our experts believe that advanced threat detection and prediction using AI-driven solutions are critical to identifying and mitigating risk more effectively. Experts also cite that the rise of AI at the edge will increase focus on managing traffic between servers and locations in a new way.
5. GenAI and Martech
Generative AI may have the most measurable impact on the martech tech stack in 2025, as changes run from current use cases like content generation, personalization, and knowledge management.
GenAI is fundamentally altering marketing approaches, as personalization and customer segmentation data render higher-quality and more efficient products. Similarly, planning, optimization and measurement enable efficient products, while capturing higher ROI for customers.
Existing vendors such as Adobe, Hubspot, Microsoft, and Salesforce have integrated capabilities into legacy products, while AI startups are innovating around standalone tools that enhance specific tasks. Companies such as Klarna have publicly stated plans to pursue custom solutions to tailor operations via custom in-house model training, fine-tuning, and utilization of retrieval augmented generation (RAG). In the long term, our experts predict that virtually all of the martech landscape will be impacted by genAI.
6. Quantum Computing and AI
Despite some limitations, AI reasoning is expected to progress in 2025, with AI advancing in math, physics, and coding. One path for accelerated growth is through quantum computing.
While not yet a mainstream trend, the capabilities of the technology coupled with AI hold promise for data analytics, as quantum computing can process complex calculations at much greater efficiency than mainstream computing can currently handle. Factors such as power consumption and calculation speed are orders of magnitude more impressive, even early in development.
Coupled with AI, experts believe there are significant areas of potential, including materials science, optimizing chip performance, vast amounts of data analysis, and energy efficiency. Just this month, Google announced a promising state-of-the-art quantum chip, Willow, that has cracked the code on an almost three-decade-long problem of computing and could potentially represent another breakthrough for AI innovation.
7. Robotics
Robotics are expected to advance significantly in 2025, driven by innovation in AI chips and hardware. Though Nvidia continues to be a leader in this space, other vendors are making significant progress. The collaboration between Qualcomm and Bosch is one example where our experts see underappreciated potential. As fleets grow in scale, data and computing power will play a more critical role, and companies are already starting to heavily invest in infrastructure as new applications come closer to reality.
For robotics applications, including autonomous mobile robots, logistics, and process automation, Nvidia’s Nova Orin architecture suggests significant advancements in sensor integration and data processing, enabling robots to perceive and interact with environments more naturally and effectively.
IPO Market and M&A Potential
Deal activity in the tech sector has been showing signs of improvement in the back half of 2024 and is expected to increase throughout 2025.
The appetite for innovation and growth, private equity cash tied up in private AI startups, and macro factors, such as stable interest rates, decelerating inflation, a record amount of dry powder, and a less stringent regulatory environment, are all driving factors for increased deal activity. Companies such as Coreweave, and Neo4j are gearing up for upcoming IPOs, while ServiceTitan recently went public. At AlphaSense, we expect to see AI drive significant investment and activity across the tech sector.
Aside from the excitement around the IPO market and AI ecosystem, traditional media companies like Disney, Warner Brothers, and Comcast (NBCUniversal) may see a return to deals. As network TV has given way to streaming, both in viewership and in ad dollars, companies may look to restructure in 2025.
CEOs of major media companies, including Sinclair, Warner Brothers Discovery, and Nexstar, have recently spoken enthusiastically about their hopes that the Trump Administration will ease the restrictions on M&A. They’re also hopeful that Trump will move to end specific laws that restrict broadcast mergers, including the 39% ownership cap, constraints on owning two or more stations in the top four in a market, and the dual network prohibition on owning two or more broadcast networks. Comcast itself has announced a spin-out of several media assets, perhaps setting the stage for a major media reshuffle in 2025.
Tariffs & Policy Impact
President-elect Trump is expected to continue the broader drive to restrict the flow of advanced technology to China, though it is unclear if the current restrictions under the Biden Administration will become even more stringent.
Many tech companies that manufacture in China are already factoring potential headwinds into their 2025 strategies. Following a recent earnings report out of Taiwan Semiconductor, questions surfaced around the timing of demand, specifically citing the potential that Chinese customers pulled forward shipments in anticipation of another round of restrictions. Looking into the new year, we’ll be watching for the imposition of stricter export controls, tariffs on Chinese-made goods, and potential retaliatory behavior from China in the event that these policies are implemented.
What to Expect in The Year Ahead
2025 promises to be a year of transformation in the tech industry, with AI disrupting industry sub-verticals and lightning-paced innovation. From cloud computing to data centers to edge, AI solutions are gaining traction, and we’ll be tracking where the successes and hurdles lie across the technology ecosystem.
AlphaSense Expert Insights reduces the time researchers spend finding critical market insights across the technology sector. The platform’s powerful AI search technology accelerates time to insight and enables professionals to allocate more time to decision-making and strategy.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Michelle Brophy
Director of Research, Tech, Media and Telecom
Michelle Brophy serves as the Director of Research, Tech, Media and Telecom at AlphaSense. Prior to joining AlphaSense, Michelle spent 3 years as the Strategist for TMT at Guidepoint Insights. Prior to this, Michelle spent 18 years on the buy side, in both portfolio manager and senior equity analyst roles, at Hilltop Park Capital and Kingdon Capital Management. Michelle resides in New York City.
Read all posts written by Michelle Brophy
[ad_2]
