02 Jan 2025 7 min read

11 major Tech Trends, You Should Be Prepared For in 2025

If you are a business leader, aspiring startup founder, or a student looking to enter the market, it’s time to prepare and start aligning with these trends.

I recently reviewed 18 AI class projects from a data science and AI course I was teaching. Most of the projects were fairly standard and what I would have expected a year ago. However, about 15% of them were truly groundbreaking, completely redefining how we think about work today. This pattern is also evident in newly incubated startups.

Drawing from my experience as:

Teaching an applied data science course to 75+ students and evaluating 18 class projects developed using the latest AI models and services.
Doing 15+ innovation pilots, seeing 1st hand AI adoption at a large legacy enterprise as the head of innovation and AI transformation at a fashion retail group
Extensive reading on the latest trends in AI and startups and following AI thought leaders like Sam Altman, Dario Amodei, and Andrew Ng.
As well as observing how my daughters interact with ChatGPT and other AI services,

I am convinced that the following patterns will become increasingly visible by 2025.

If you are a business leader, aspiring startup founder, or a student looking to enter the market, it’s time to prepare and start aligning with these trends.

Ideas will matter more than execution

Due to AI-based coding, effort and time from idea to end application is reduced from 5 months and $50,000 to a few minutes and $30. This is going to have significant repercussions.

A Couple tweets about Replit AI agent

Replit agent is 🔥🔥🔥

Crazy. Built a digital store app with @stripe integration using @replit agent in under an hour! 🤯

Used 5 prompts

Here's what the replit agent did
✅ created the database and added the orders and products tables
✅ automatically added the products… pic.twitter.com/8wo7bpuGCb
— Melvin Vivas (@donvito) December 29, 2024

Build a digital store with database back-end and stripe for payments under one hour.

Sand Tetris: from lunchtime idea to playable game in ~3 mins

Built with a single shot prompt using Grok + Replit pic.twitter.com/IYUr1QZvuJ
— Luis Batalha 🇵🇹🇺🇸 (@luismbat) December 29, 2024

playable game in 3 mins

Hardware-Software Robotics Integration

The rise of reasoning and large vision models (LVM) has already created a foundation for physical agents, combining hardware and software in robotics. Startups in this space will find tools like Raspberry Pi and NVIDIA Jetson Nano indispensable.

Imagine a kid's toy that can talk and sing. Following is an example large action model trained by Pi.

Vertical AI with Reasoning Capabilities

Vertically focused, agentic AIs will demonstrate significant value, especially in reasoning and cognitive tasks. If you're an entrepreneur, this is a prime opportunity to build solutions in this space.

Agent force by salesforce is an example of this trend.

Standalone AI tools are evolving toward AI-human symbiosis.

AI assistants are no longer just tools; they are becoming collaborative co-workers for humans. While earlier tools like ChatGPT were effective, their usage was often fragmented and hard. Now, AI tools are increasingly integrating seamlessly into workflows, aligning better with how humans operate.

Examples include writing support tools like ChatGPT integrated with Canvas and advanced image and video editing features available in platforms like SORA. Expect significant improvement in that direction.

Sora not just generating video now but also giving a full design interface to humans for better control.

Evolving Pricing Models for Agentic Systems

Traditional seat-based pricing for software may give way to result-based, Result-as-service (RAAS), value-based, or compute-based pricing models as agentic applications gain traction.

Voice as the New Interface

Voice interactions with AI will become commonplace, moving beyond chatbots to natural conversations over phone calls. Expect more and more AI on the other end of phone calls.

Major Reduction in Headcounts Across Businesses

Large corporations will reduce headcounts, while nimble AI-first companies, often with fewer than five people, will achieve potentially billion-dollar revenues.

Expect automation to handle up to 80% of content generation, customer service, and coding tasks. Agentic systems will automate major cognitive tasks in other functions as well.

Disruption in Software & IT Services

Traditional software & IT service models, such as resource augmentation ($5,000/month for back-end developers) or basic app development for $10,000, will no longer work. Look how non-techies developing applications by replit agents. The industry will demand more than just tech coders; domain understanding, problem-solving, and working towards business results will be required.

Evolving Roles in Tech

Tech roles like software engineering and BI engineering will require full-stack expertise, including the ability to debug AI-generated code.

A deep understanding of the business problem space will be a prerequisite for success.

The Future of Education

The education system as we know it is poised for disruption. The very definition of knowledge is changed.

As a father of three daughters, I strongly feel that the current education paradigm not only fails to add value but actively hinders our students' abilities. These students will struggle in this era. Perhaps no education at all would be better than the outdated schooling system.