Most anticipated trends in tech and business

From: allin

The year 2025 is anticipated to bring significant shifts and accelerations across technology, business, and economic landscapes, with predictions ranging from breakthroughs in artificial intelligence and robotics to major economic realignments and shifts in global power dynamics.

Key Trends

Technological Advancements and Adoption

One of the most profound anticipated trends is the continued, and even accelerated, advancement of artificial intelligence and robotics.

• Autonomous Hardware and Robotics: 2025 is projected as “the year of the robot,” with significant advancements in autonomous hardware. Companies like Unitree are producing accessible robots, such as the Go2 model ($1,600)withAPI,LiDAR,andintelligenceguidancesystems,capableofscientificapplicationsorautonomousfieldsoldierroles<aclass="yt-timestamp"data-t="01:17:51">[01:17:51]</a>.HumanoidrobotsliketheG1($16,000) are also emerging, capable of being commanded for household or factory tasks [01:20:03].
• Full Self-Driving (FSD) Mainstream Adoption: Full Self-Driving technology is expected to cross into mainstream adoption, with growing preferences for FSD-enabled vehicles like Teslas for safety reasons, especially during late-night rides [01:21:23].
• Accelerated AI Progress: AI is predicted to make more progress per quarter in 2025 than it did per year in 2023 and 2024 [01:34:08]. This acceleration is attributed to scaling across three axes: pre-training, inference time compute, and reasoning [01:34:36]. Models are generating synthetic data with “reasoning traces” (internal monologues of problem-solving), leading to increasingly unpredictable and advanced leaps in various domains [01:35:28].

Business and Market Dynamics

The business landscape is anticipated to undergo significant transformations driven by technological shifts, economic pressures, and policy changes.

• Rise of Dollar-Denominated Stablecoins: Stablecoin usage is projected to quadruple or quintuple by the end of 2025, fundamentally challenging the duopoly of Visa and MasterCard [01:24:49]. In 2024, stablecoins decoupled from crypto volatility and saw a transaction volume of $8.5 trillion, more than double Visa’s volume in the same period [01:23:41].
• Mega-Mergers in Traditional Auto OEMs: The traditional auto industry is expected to face significant consolidation, with a wave of “Mega mergers” due to the increasing uninvestability of OEMs in the face of competition from companies like Tesla and Chinese manufacturers [01:47:10].
• Increased M&A and IPO Activity: Following a period of slowed activity, a “tidal wave” of mergers and acquisitions and a surge in IPOs are anticipated as the “wrath of Lenina Con” (referring to Lina Khan, FTC Chair) ends, allowing mega-deals to proceed [01:38:46]. Possible deals include Amazon buying DoorDash or Tesla acquiring Uber [01:52:55].
• Hardware Manufacturing Buildout in the US: There will be massive funding deals for hardware-based manufacturing buildout in the United States, including government support to accelerate onshore production of autonomous and robotic systems [01:50:03].
• Struggle for Enterprise Application Software: Enterprise application software companies are predicted to face significant pain in 2025. This is due to the rise of AI agents (models that can take action online) that will dominate the market, alongside the inherent cost disadvantage of companies that don’t own their own compute infrastructure [01:23:35]. This shift will lead to pricing compression and replacement by in-house AI tools or next-generation businesses built at a fraction of the cost [01:26:08].

Political and Economic Environment

Political and economic shifts are also expected to shape the year.

• Rise of Fiscal Conservatives: Fiscal conservatives are predicted to be the biggest political winners, with a focus on austerity to combat waste, fraud, and abuse in government spending [00:06:51].
• Emergence of Younger Candidates: A new trend of younger political candidates (Gen X and Elder Millennials) is anticipated, shifting the average age of political leadership, potentially leading to more forward-thinking policies [00:08:04].
• Geopolitical Realignments: Russia (Putin) is expected to be a major political loser, facing humiliating defeat in Ukraine and decoupling from China. This rearmament of Europe could free up US resources for the Pacific [00:09:36].
• Decline of “Progressivism”: There’s a prediction that “progressivism” (defined as class-based identity politics) will be a significant political loser globally, evidenced by potential shifts in leadership in Canada, Germany, France, and the UK towards more conservative or nationalist parties [01:13:01]. However, a contrasting view suggests a rise in socialist movements in the US due to wealth polarization and job disruption from AI and deregulation [01:05:46].
• Nuclear Power Buildout: The deregulation and new technologies are expected to facilitate a significant buildout of nuclear power in the United States, deemed a necessity to meet competitive power demand against countries like China [01:33:00].
• Government Service Providers in Pain: Government service providers are expected to be major business losers, as a new administration may scrutinize bills and shift away from inefficient “Cost Plus” contracts towards more tech-oriented solutions [01:39:25]. This scrutiny could extend to traditional consulting companies [01:42:20].
• Potential Banking Crisis: A contrarian belief suggests a small but impactful chance of a banking crisis in one of the major mainline banks in 2025, stemming from the massive total indebtedness (US government, corporates, mortgage debt) and the painful impact of 5% interest rates [01:00:43]. This could be triggered by market-to-market or credit default problems, leading to reserve issues [01:02:32].
• Deregulation and GDP Growth: There’s a belief that America will experience a year of greater than 5% real GDP growth at some point over the next four years, driven by AI and deregulation-fueled productivity [01:04:00].

Media and Entertainment

Anticipated media trends include political content and new forms of entertainment.

• Political Transparency (Declassified Files): The Trump administration is expected to declassify and release an “unbelievably interesting, salacious, useful, good, earnest” enormity of files, potentially including JFK, Epstein, and Diddy files, and even addressing fringe conspiracy theories [01:40:08].
• AI Video Games: The video game industry is set for a “rewrite” with AI capabilities, leading to lower production costs, dynamic storylines, and new gameplay concepts [01:40:56].
• Shifting Media Outlets: Legacy media outlets owned by billionaires or those seeking neutrality (e.g., Washington Post, CNN, LA Times) are predicted to steer towards classic journalism, causing “chaos in the editorial newsrooms” [01:39:25].
• High Bandwidth Memory: Companies producing high bandwidth memory (HBM) like Hynix and Micron are expected to be among the best-performing assets, as HBM is a critical and sold-out component for AI compute (e.g., Nvidia and AMD GPUs) [01:14:10].
• Chinese Tech Stocks Rebound: A contrarian belief suggests Chinese tech stocks or ETFs could be the best-performing asset, driven by a potential “great deal” between the Trump administration and China, China’s massive electricity production buildout, and the Chinese Communist Party’s ability to throttle free markets towards innovation [01:17:42].
• Big Tech (MAG7) Continued Dominance: The “MAG7” (Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon, Nvidia, Meta, Tesla) is predicted to be the best-performing asset, as these companies apply AI internally to achieve “incredible earnings expansion” by automating jobs and increasing productivity [01:22:11].
• Investment in Credit Default Swaps (CDS): A highly contrarian and high-risk prediction is to be long Credit Default Swaps (CDS) as an “insurance policy” against potential market volatility or a banking crisis, with the potential for massive returns if a default event occurs [01:15:35].
• Decline of Legacy Auto and Real Estate: Legacy car companies and real estate are predicted to be the worst-performing assets, facing continued headwinds from overbuilt inventories, declining housing values in some regions, and unaffordable mortgages [01:29:41].

Contrarian Beliefs

• Banking Crisis: While not seen as likely by all, the possibility of a banking crisis in a major mainline bank due to high debt levels and interest rates is a significant contrarian view [01:00:43].
• Rise of Socialism: Despite recent election results interpreted as a mandate against socialism, a contrarian view posits a dramatic rise in socialist movements in the US in 2025. This is attributed to economic growth not benefiting everyone equally, leading to a large contingent of people being “left behind” by rapid technological and economic changes (e.g., AI amplifying inequality and job disruption) [01:05:46].
• AI Labs Stop Releasing Models: Frontier AI Labs are predicted to stop releasing their leading-edge models to prevent “knowledge distillation” and the theft of their intellectual property, especially by countries like China [01:04:47].
• Collapse of OpenAI: A bold contrarian prediction is the “total collapse” of OpenAI, losing its lead and its nonprofit-to-for-profit transition, eventually becoming the number four player in AI due to competition from Google, XAI, and internal Microsoft developments, as well as developer preference for open-source alternatives [01:44:31].
• Government Knowledge of UFOs: A discussion around the contrarian belief that the US government is sitting on knowledge or proof of extraterrestrial life, with a 20-25% chance cited [01:50:37].

These predictions paint a picture of a dynamic and potentially disruptive 2025, characterized by rapid technological innovation, significant economic shifts, and complex political dynamics.