What are the main tech trends for 2025?

The main tech trends for 2025 are: AI evolving beyond the hype, the expansion of the human-tech relationship, sustainability driving innovation, and the rise of high cost high performance technologies.

How is AI expected to evolve in 2025?

AI is expected to become an everyday tool that predicts, designs, and executes, becoming part of key decision-making frameworks across shopping, business, education, and healthcare. There will also be increased scrutiny and regulation on data usage and ethics.

What is human-centric tech?

Human-centric tech refers to technology designed to improve well-being and work with human needs, such as AI that monitors workload stress and interfaces that adapt to individual preferences.

How is sustainability impacting technology?

Sustainability is becoming both an ethical and competitive factor, with organizations prioritizing eco-conscious computing, using greener operations, and offering features like green compute to reduce carbon footprint.

What are the challenges of high performing AI models?

The main challenge is the computational cost. Advanced models like GPT o3 require millions of tokens per task, and single tasks can cost upwards of $10,000, prompting the development of more affordable versions.

What is green compute?

Green compute refers to running computational workloads during periods when renewable energy is most available, such as off-peak hours, in order to reduce carbon emissions.

4 key tech trends for 2025

Key Takeaways

Generative AI is moving from hype to practical, everyday use across industries, but will face tighter regulation and scrutiny.
Human-centric technologies will focus on supporting well-being and creating a healthier relationship between people and tech.
Sustainability is now a business advantage, with organisations prioritising green computing and ambitious carbon targets.
Major AI advancements deliver impressive results but come with high costs, leading to more affordable versions for broader access.

Every year, the tech industry seems to redefine its own boundaries and I think the current trends shaping technology are a fascinating mix of maturity and experimentation.

Some focus on optimizing industry in what we already have, others point toward radical shifts that could upend the way we live our day-to-day lives.

1. AI Evolving Beyond the hype

By now, Generative AI has established itself as more than a passing trend.

Companies are embracing Gen AI as a consumer companion: Shopify for instance uses AI to enable merchants to automatically generate product descriptions tailored to target audiences.

In 2025, I think we’ll see its integration move beyond soulless demos to become an everyday tool in shopping, business, education, and healthcare. AI won’t just assist but it will predict, design, and execute, becoming a core part of decision-making frameworks.

However, as adoption scales, so will it’s scrutiny. I’d expect tighter regulations around data usage, transparency, and ethical boundaries. Organisations that fail to address these concerns risk reputational damage as they chase the promise of AI driven growth.

2. The Human-Tech Relationship Expands

As technology becomes more pervasive, there’s growing awareness of its impact on mental health and productivity. 2025 will continue the rise in “human-centric tech” (tools designed to work with, rather than against, human needs).

For example, AI that supports well-being (like monitoring workload stress), and user interfaces that adapt to individual preferences. The goal isn’t just technical efficiency but creating a healthier, more balanced relationship between people and technology.

Whoop (a wearable fitness brand) has already released an powered AI coach - which delivers personalised health and fitness guidance based on your goals, unique biometric data, and the latest performance science.

3. Sustainability Driving Innovation

Google has commitment to be operating entirely on carbon free energy by 2030 and offers the ability to track the carbon footprint of your own cloud usage, enabling optimization for greener operations.

Sustainability isn’t just an ethical standpoint now, it’s becoming a competitive advantage as organisations seek partners with ambitious carbon targets to align with their own sustainability goals.

Given legal deadlines driven by cross-border climate activity such as the Paris Agreement are looming closer - there will be an inevitable push towards green.

Offerings which enable “green compute” (e.g. running workloads during off-peak energy hours, when renewable sources are pushing mist power to the grid) are becoming more widely available.

I expect more and more organisations to prioritise sustainability and treat and eco-conscious computing as a first class consideration.

4. High Cost High Performance

The end of 2024 looked to have a bit of a slow-down for the top performers in GenAI - but that changed with the release of GPT 03. o3 achieved remarkable scores on the ARC benchmark - 75.7% under standard compute and 87.5% using high compute, substantially outperforming Claude 3.5’s 53%.

While this represents a significant advancement in AI capabilities, particularly through innovations like program synthesis and natural language program search, the model faces huge challenges regarding computational costs, requiring millions of tokens per task - with some single tasks costing upwards of $10,000.

This cost concern led OpenAI to announce a scaled-down “o3-mini” version, planned for release in January 2025, which looks to balance performance with affordability for enterprise users.

So whats next?

How ready you are to leverage the future? Which of these might drive your next big opportunity?