Even artificial intelligence can’t (yet) predict the future, but two of our tech editors have taken a look ahead at what they think will be big in 2025.
Crypto friend in the White House?
As 2022 drew to a close, the outlook for cryptocurrency business was bleak.
One of his most famous companies, FTX, failed with $8bn (£6.3bn) unregistered funds of customers.
In March 2024, company co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried received a sentence of 25 years in prison for defrauding customers and investors.
The scandal shook confidence in the entire sector.
It seemed that cryptocurrencies would remain a niche product, with an enthusiastic but relatively limited following.
But just a few months later, the industry was once again buzzing with optimism. Behind the enthusiasm – the success of Donald Trump in the presidential elections on November 5.
The feeling was that he would be more favorable to the cryptocurrency sector and so far it seems to be the case.
At the beginning of December Trump said he would nominate former Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Commissioner Paul Atkins to take a leading role at the Wall Street regulator.
Mr Atkins is thought to be far more cryptocurrency-friendly than outgoing boss Gary Gensler.
That announcement helped push the value of one bitcoin, the largest of the many cryptocurrencies, to $100,000.
“With Trump winning, you can imagine in 2025 you’ll get proactive regulation. You’ll get some of the negative regulation removed, which will then allow banks and other institutions to enter the space,” says Geoffrey Kendrick, global head of digital asset research at Standard Chartered.
Mr. Kendrick specifically points to guidance issued by the SEC called SAB 121. Since it took effect in 2022, it has made it difficult for banks and other financial companies to provide cryptocurrency services.
Such a move could help Trump fulfill his promise made in July to put the US in charge the cryptocurrency capital of the world.
If he follows through on that promise, it would be a remarkable turnaround from 2021 when Trump described Bitcoin as a “fraud”.
AI is getting personal
As AI tools move into our phones—Apple, Google, and Samsung have launched services that can edit photos, translate languages, and conduct web searches—we’re at the beginning of an era in which AI becomes an integral part of our digital lives and increasingly useful in personal level.
That is if we allow it, because it takes some faith.
Let’s take journaling as an example. An AI tool can effectively manage your diary for you, if you allow it access. But how far should this go?
To be truly useful, does that mean it also needs to know who you’d rather avoid meeting or relationships you want to keep secret and from whom?
Do you want it to provide you with summaries of consultations or medical examinations?
This is deeply personal data, potentially both extremely embarrassing and extremely valuable if some glitch means it’s shared. Do you trust big tech companies with that kind of data?
Microsoft is pushing this particular door hard. He ran into trouble in 2024 for demonstrating a tool called Recall, which took snapshots of laptop desktops every few seconds to help users locate content they saw but couldn’t remember where.
It has now made a number of changes to the product – which never launched – but is sticking with it.
“I think we’re moving into a fundamentally new era where there will be ever-present, persistent, highly capable co-pilot companions in your daily life,” Mustafa Suleyman, the head of an AI company, told me recently.
Despite the challenges, Ben Wood, principal analyst at technology research firm CCS Insight, expects more personalized AI services to emerge in 2025.
“Results will be continuously updated by relying on evolving data sources such as email, messages, documents and social media interactions.
“This will allow the AI service to be tailored specifically to a person’s communication style, needs and preferences,” he says.
But Mr. Wood accepts that letting artificial intelligence access your personal data will be a big step.
“Trust will be key,” says Mr Wood.
Data in motion
The more money poured into artificial intelligence, the more data centers will need to be built.
Training and running AI requires a lot of computing power, and it works best with the latest computer chips and servers.
In the next five years, the biggest data users, including Google, Microsoft and Meta, could invest as much as $1 billion in data centers. according to CCS Insight.
In Europe alone, between 2024 and 2028, data center capacity is expected to grow by an average of 9% per year, according to real estate services firm Savills.
But these new facilities are unlikely to be built in current data center hubs like London, Frankfurt and Amsterdam.
High property prices in these cities – Savills says that in London land prices can be as much as 17 million pounds per hectare – plus limited electricity supply means developers will look elsewhere.
UK cities such as Cambridge, Manchester and Birmingham could be home to the next wave of data center construction.
Elsewhere, Prague, Genoa, Munich, Dusseldorf and Milan are likely to be considered in Europe.
At the heart of some of these new data centers will be the latest computer chip from Nvidia, the company that dominates the market for chips used for AI.
Presented in March 2024the Blackwell chip is expected to begin shipping in significant numbers in 2025.
The new chip should allow tech companies to train AI four times faster and make AI run 30 times faster than current computer chips, according to Vivek Arya, senior semiconductor analyst at Bank of America Securities.
Nvidia’s biggest customers, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta and Coreweave are likely to be the first to get the technology, according to reports.
But other buyers may struggle to get their hands on the super chip, with “limited supply in 2025”, according to Mr Arya.
