AI, beating the quantum threat, social media: What to expect from tech in 2025

The buzziest acronym in technology last year was artificial intelligence, but will AI keep the pace in 2025?

And which other tech will be important this year - will cryptocurrency continue its high and how could social media change?

Euronews Next takes a look at what we can expect from tech trends as we kick off the new year.

AI: More agents and data centres

Artificial intelligence was used to make a number of discoveries in 2024, such as being able to decipher 2,000-year-old scrolls that would otherwise crumble if touched by humans.

AI also continued to hold promise for making our future lives easier with so-called AI agents. 

While numerous companies have rolled out AI agents, they are not as capable as they could be one day but we can expect to see more of them this year.

“Enterprises are set to have a slew of AI agents, which are semiautonomous, trained models that work across internal networks to help with customer service, human resources, data security and more,” said Kari Briski, vice president of generative AI software at Nvidia. 

“Knowledge workers will be more productive because they can tap into a personalised team of AI-powered experts. Developers will be able to build these advanced agents using customisable AI blueprints,” she added. 

Powering this technology will also require AI factories and data centres, and we can expect many more of them in 2025, said Nvidia’s vice president of DGX platforms Charlie Boyle. 

Making the power-hungry technology more sustainable will also be key this year. 

“As AI workloads continue to drive growth, pioneering organisations will transition to liquid cooling to maximise performance and energy efficiency,” said Boyle.

“Hyperscale cloud providers and large enterprises will lead the way, using liquid cooling in new AI data centres that house hundreds of thousands of AI accelerators, networking and software,” he added. 

Tech in Europe: Cleantech AI start-ups and Romania’s moment

Green AI tech could also be Europe’s strong suit in 2025, said the CEO of EIT Digital, a European education and innovation organisation. 

“I think the big important development for Europe next year will be the continued growth of AI in the sustainability domain in green clean tech,” Federico Menna told Euronews Next.

“We see that more and more of these topics [climate] are attracting investments and talents, and Europe has a competitive advantage because historically, we have worked on these not for business purposes, but because of European values,” he added. 

The increasing urgency of addressing climate change will probably generate “a surge in cleantech start-ups,” he said. 

Menna also said that he believes we will see the rise of Eastern European countries for their tech this year. 

He said Romania is “really leading the way” in tech and it is “Google mania” there, especially in cyber security. Poland and Hungry are also investing heavily in cyber security. 

The war in Ukraine has also made defence tech more crucial, which also includes cyber security. 

Menna said Estonia and Latvia are leading Europe’s defence tech scene, which will continue to be big in 2025 and see dual-use technologies, those for military and civilian use, expand. 

Quantum: Beating the quantum threat

Quantum technology continued to develop in 2024, with Google announcing their Willow chip, which performed a computation in less than five minutes that would have taken the fastest supercomputer 10 septillion years to achieve. 

While Google’s feat was not exactly a watershed moment for quantum, as other quantum companies are doing similar things, we can expect 2025 to see the rise of quantum cryptography.

The quantum threat is when a quantum computer so powerful is built, it could break the public encryption systems that protect our online conversations, bank accounts, and most vital infrastructure, wreaking havoc on governments and businesses.

Therefore, quantum cryptography, sometimes called post-quantum cryptography, is looked to as the answer to prevent this digital doomsday. 

“I think quantum cryptography will really start emerging because now quantum was always on the verge of becoming the next wave,” said Menna. 

“We see more and more that quantum is becoming more relevant and in the end is linked to defence in a way… So quantum cryptography would probably be very important for governments,” he added. 

Social media: More regulation and advertisers

Social media saw big changes in 2024 with Elon Musk’s social media platform X becoming his mouthpiece in this year’s US election, TikTok’s continued dominance, and the growth of alternative platform Bluesky.

“Big social media platforms are in competition with emerging social media platforms. I think TikTok made a huge mark in 2023 to 2024 and sort of emerged as a big, big, big player in the social media ecosystem,” said Nighat Dad, a Pakistan-based Internet activist who runs the not-for-profit organisation Digital Rights Foundation.

She told Euronews Next that users will lean more towards privacy-friendly platforms due to authoritarian and semi-autocratic governments clamping down on social media companies with “problematic laws”.

“It will force users to move on to platforms which are more independent, open source, not owned by a Silicon Valley CEO, and are more user friendly, and have better content moderation policies”.

Dad thinks 2025 will see regulations around the world play a huge role in terms of social media platforms and compliance around content moderation.  

However, she said the US would probably go the opposite way from Europe, which is trying to hold social media companies accountable through regulation because of the close relationship between Musk and US President-elect Donald Trump.

“I feel like no one can predict anything about Trump and Musk. But definitely, the space will be the complete opposite of what the EU is trying to do,” she said. 

She also believes that revenue for social media will come through advertising, and it is advertisers “who will set the rules”. 

Dad said advertisers are the stakeholders who have been “behind the scenes so far, but they will come out as big stakeholders in 2025”.

AI in social media: ‘A mess’

2024 was also tipped to be the year of AI in global elections, with fears of deepfakes and misinformation flooding the Internet. While experts say this did not happen as anticipated in the US election, Dad said it is happening in the rest of the world.

“I think AI on social media will be a mess because it's already going unnoticed in the global majority,” Dad said. 

“I feel that if social media platforms really didn't look into the space around AI-generated content, it will be out of control in 2025 in terms of moderating that kind of content,” she added. 

Robotics: Not quite taking over our homes yet

In July 2024, Musk said that Tesla would produce “genuinely useful” humanoid robots to start working in its factories in 2025.

But it is unlikely to be a year in which we see widespread access to at-home robots that do the household tasks we do not want to do.

“In 2025, we will see the first prototypes of robots that can navigate outside structured industrial environments and act relatively independently and proactively. They will assist with tidying up, cleaning, organising items, locating them when needed, and perhaps even loading the dishwasher,” David Reger, CEO of German robotics firm Neura Robotics, told Euronews Next. 

But he said because the development of AI and hardware in this area is moving very fast, and many of the biggest advances are currently taking place in secret, it is not possible to make a serious prediction as to whether people will be able to buy a home robot in an electronics store or online this year.

“Regulatory and legal requirements will also play a key role. However, we will certainly see the first pilot projects in the commercial sector, or in public institutions, care homes or hospitals, where robots take over household tasks,” he added. 

With Musk being close to Trump, robotics could be a key market, said Reger.

Due to not having cheap skilled labour, the US “will not be able to thrive on online commerce, computers, search engines and metaverses,” he said. 

“The need for rapid economic success in the USA could therefore result in a unique momentum for robotics, especially because robotics is the biggest market of the future, and Trump knows that,” he added.

This would in turn have positive impulses for the world, for Europe and corresponding partnerships and trade relations would then be enormous, Reger said. 

Crypto: Moving markets

Cryptocurrencies saw 2024 end at record levels with Bitcoin’s price reaching historic highs.

Whether that will continue is unclear in 2025 but the year could see a better understanding and more of an acceptance of crypto and blockchain technology by the general population, Pascal Gauthier, CEO of crypto wallet company Ledger, told Euronews Next. 

As for crypto companies, “people will worry less about cycles and if it is a bull or bear run as the market will be big enough for companies to thrive,” he said.