4 Major Tech Trends to Expect in 2025

As 2025 progresses, our analysts will be providing expert commentary on the precise developments within specific tech sectors (you can read our 2024 reports here). But right now, with the year just getting started, it’s a good moment to pause and consider some of the prominent trends which are likely to influence M&A activity over the next 12 months…

In November, the founder and CEO of NVIDIA – the tech colossus whose chips have underpinned the AI revolution – declared 2025 to be the “year of AI agents” which will be thought of as “digital employees”. Other industry insiders and commentators conur; that same month, the chief scientist of Salesforce AI Research told Forbes that the current normalisation of agentic solutions represents “the third wave” of AI, following on from predictive data analytics (the first wave) and generative AI (the second).

Agentic AI is distinguished from previous bots by its autonomous nature, with agents being able to learn, make decisions and tackle the minutiae of everyday workflows, from developing sales leads to undertaking legal research to diagnosing diseases.

Of course, AI firms have already released these kinds of solutions into the workplace (to take just one example, AI legal assistant CoCounsel is in use at 10,000 law firms and legal departments in the US). However, in the words of the Europe head of IT multinational Tech Mahindra, 2025 heralds “the defining moment for agentic AI”, with its ability to automate workflows and alleviate the particular pain points of specific subsectors making it an ”everyday operational necessity”.

The lucrative SaaS opportunities presented by this inflection point is sure to spur M&A activity – something we look forward to covering in our next AI market report.

There were certainly some eye-catching moments in the realm of robotics last year, notably the unveiling of an uncannily life-like, all-electric humanoid robot by Boston Dynamics, and Elon Musk’s announcement that Tesla’s Optimus robot would go into production in 2025, with 1,000 units expected to be working at the company’s factories by the end of the year.

Whether or not the Musk prediction actually comes to pass, there’s no denying that this is set to be a big year for AI robotics, with research by global IT consultancy Capgemini recently revealing that 43% of venture capitalists place “AI-driven automation and robotics” among the top tech trends they’re expecting in 2025. The incorporation of generative AI frees the new generation of robots from the constraints of task-specific programming, allowing them to autonomously adapt to different scenarios just like their purely software-based agentic AI counterparts.

The acceleration in AI robotics will be further fuelled by improvements in hardware. As the CTO of robotics and logistics company Dexory put it in a recent interview, 2025 will “see further improvements in the autonomy and sensor technology integrated into robotic systems. This will allow robots to better navigate their surroundings and handle more complex, unstructured environments.”

Such developments will likely see surging acquirer and investor interest not only in specifically robotics-focused businesses, but all manner of companies involved in procurement, warehouse management, and other forms of Supply Chain Management technology.

Quantum computing has long been one of the most exciting fields within tech, with its long-awaited inflection point always tantalisingly on the horizon.

While the United Nations has proclaimed 2025 to be the “International Year of Quantum Science and Technology”, we’re still a way off from this technology solving the unfathomable mysteries of the universe (or even being deployed in a way that ordinary folks understand). That said, promising developments over the past year point to further milestones being reached in 2025.

Such developments have included research by Oxford University Physics demonstrating “for the first time that quantum computing in the cloud can be accessed in a scalable, practical way”, and the blockbuster unveiling of Google’s quantum chip Willow, which the company says “paves the way to a useful, large-scale quantum computer”.  

2024 was also a banner year for quantum startups, with Dealroom data showing that they racked up $2.4 billion in fundraises compared to $1.7 billion the year before. As established and emerging players jockey for position in this run-up to a quantum-powered world, we anticipate robust M&A activity with more deals such as the $10.3 million seed round bonanza enjoyed by Danish quantum startup Kvantify last year.

Another hotly tipped 2025 tech trend is an escalation in interest in spatial computing, the field encompassing virtual/augmented/mixed realities, digital twins, IoT, and related technologies associated with creating fully interactive, 3D digital models and spaces. 

The last few years have seen plenty of buzz around the numerous use cases of spatial computing, whether in terms of allowing designers to test out their ideas without building physical prototypes, allowing customers to browse virtual stores, or even allowing surgeons to undertake training in a risk-free way. Mainstream adoption has remained elusive however, exemplified by Apple halting production on its Vision Pro headset which was only released last February.

Such apparent false starts notwithstanding, the likes of Gartner and Deloitte have pointed to spatial computing as one of the most significant fields to watch in 2025, with the incorporation of AI set to spur further advances in the creation of fully immersive spaces.