2025’s Most Anticipated Tech Events You Shouldn’t Miss
Tech Frontier |
Today, technological advancements are in full swing, and the AI race has reached a fever pitch. Models like DeepSeekt and Grok3 have astonished the world with their astonishing capabilities, but these represent only a fraction of publicly available technologies. Undisclosed technologies, particularly in the military and financial sectors, may already surpass our imaginations. We may even have conscious, superintelligent AIs, quietly spreading across the globe, undetected. This possibility is both exciting and unsettling, as it suggests that exponential technological progress could soon bring AGI (artificial general intelligence) and ASI (artificial superintelligence) into reality.
At the same time, Microsoft's quantum chip technology and breakthroughs in AI in medicine are painting a utopian vision for humanity: diseases cured, debts written off, humans becoming smarter and more personalized through brain-computer interfaces, dreams realized, and even space exploration and the search for extraterrestrial life. Breakthroughs in physics, such as faster-than-light travel and interstellar colonization, are also possible. The future seems within reach, but are we truly ready?
- Quantum Technology Moves Toward Commercialization
In June 2024, the United Nations declared 2025 the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology, aiming to raise public awareness of the importance of quantum science and applications. Although quantum technology has yet to achieve large-scale commercialization, the pace of research and development and commercialization in this field is accelerating.
Google recently announced the launch of its new quantum chip, Willow, which solves a key challenge in quantum error correction that has been a challenge for nearly 30 years and demonstrates very high performance in benchmark tests. Google CEO Sundar Pichai called it a major step toward building a practical quantum computer.
Microsoft and Atomic Computing recently jointly announced a breakthrough in fault-tolerant quantum computing. By using lasers to immobilize neutral atoms, they successfully achieved entanglement of 24 logical qubits. The two companies plan to deliver a quantum computer based on this technology to commercial customers in 2025.
Quantum technology is also becoming a key driver in other technological fields. In the field of cryptography, the application of quantum computing in cybersecurity poses challenges to traditional encryption technologies and promotes the development of post-quantum cryptography. In the pharmaceutical industry, quantum computing can simulate intermolecular interactions at an unprecedented scale, improving drug development efficiency.
- Expanding Applications of Gene Therapy
Gene-editing technologies, represented by CRISPR, are becoming a hot area in drug development. Known as "gene scissors," CRISPR technology can precisely modify DNA, which carries genetic information, potentially correcting disease-causing genetic mutations.
In November and December 2023, Casgevy, the world's first CRISPR-based in vivo gene-editing therapy, was launched in the UK and US for the treatment of sickle cell disease and transfusion-dependent beta-thalassemia. Several other CRISPR-based in vivo gene-editing therapies are in clinical trials worldwide, targeting diseases including chronic hepatitis B, transthyretin amyloidosis, and age-related macular degeneration. By 2025, CRISPR-based therapies are expected to play an even greater role in disease treatment.
CRISPR technology has also facilitated the development of therapies such as chimeric antigen receptor T cells (CAR-T), demonstrating its growing medical application. Using CRISPR to genetically modify CAR-T cells from healthy donors can enhance the efficacy of CAR-T therapy and expand its application beyond the treatment of hematologic malignancies to include autoimmune diseases and other areas.
- Space Exploration Booms in Multiple Areas
In 2025, space agencies and companies from multiple countries have scheduled a series of space exploration missions. The new year promises to be a busy year for lunar exploration, with the Japanese private company iSpace launching a new lunar exploration mission and the US private company Intuitive Machines sending a lander to the lunar south pole.
In space exploration, NASA will launch the Cosmic History, Epoch of Reionization, and Ices Explorer Spectrophotometer (SPHEREx) in February 2025. This two-year mission will survey the sky in visible and near-infrared wavelengths, acquiring data on over 450 million galaxies and over 100 million stars in the Milky Way. In addition, two missions studying solar wind will launch in 2025. The Solar Wind-Magnetosphere Interaction Panoramic Imaging Satellite (SMILE), a joint project between the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the European Space Agency, will study how the solar wind interacts with Earth's magnetic field. NASA's PUNCH mission will probe deep into the solar atmosphere to explore how energy flows into the solar system.
- Green Technology Addresses Climate Challenges
Against the backdrop of intensifying global climate change, green technology is considered one of the key directions of technological development through 2025. With technological advances, renewable energy sources such as solar, wind, and hydrogen will become more efficient and economical, further promoting the green energy transition. Technologies such as carbon capture and storage will also play a key role in addressing climate change.
The rapid development of artificial intelligence has highlighted the enormous demand for energy, leading many tech giants to turn their attention to nuclear power. In 2024, companies such as Google, Microsoft, and Amazon announced direct investments in nuclear power companies or purchase electricity from them. The International Energy Agency previously predicted that global nuclear power generation will reach a record high in 2025. Innovative developments in nuclear technologies, such as small modular reactors, will provide safer and more efficient nuclear energy solutions.
The 30th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change will be held in Brazil in November 2025, and countries hope to make new progress on climate finance.
- The Continuous Evolution of Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence (AI) has become a driving force for global economic, industrial, and social change. By 2025, AI will penetrate further into healthcare, education, transportation, and other fields, becoming a common tool in people's work and daily lives.
Multimodal AI is a major milestone in AI's evolution. It integrates data such as text, images, audio, and video to provide users with a more natural and intuitive human-computer interaction experience. The "AI Business Trends 2025" report recently released by Google Cloud predicts that multimodal AI will become the primary driver of enterprise AI adoption in 2025, and the global multimodal AI market is expected to reach US$2.4 billion in 2025.
As AI continues to evolve, how to effectively integrate and apply AI technologies has become a key industry focus. In this regard, intelligent agents that can use AI to perceive their environment, make autonomous decisions, and execute tasks are already emerging. Gartner, a US-based consulting firm, has listed intelligent agents among its top ten strategic technology trends for 2025 and predicts that by 2028, at least 15% of daily work decisions will be made autonomously by intelligent agents.
