2025 Forecast: How Emerging Tech Will Redefine Leadership and Strategy
As we barrel toward 2025, one thing is clear: the pace of innovation isn’t slowing down—if anything, it’s gaining speed. The challenges we face are just as significant as the opportunities ahead.
AI continues to rewrite the rules of work, cybersecurity remains a relentless battlefield, sustainability is a survival mandate, and data is becoming our greatest asset and our biggest vulnerability.
In this piece, I’ve gathered insightful commentary from some of the sharpest minds in the industry – a mix of thought-provoking leadership tips, actionable takeaways, and grounded perspectives on where we’re headed.
We’ll examine AI’s evolution into industry-specific agents, the rising importance of data sovereignty, and the pushback against outdated pricing models. These predictions are meant to give you, a leader in the trenches, something to chew on.
As you dive in, consider how these trends and challenges intersect with your world. What changes can you make now to get ahead? Which predictions will you follow, and which ones will you challenge?
AI's Expanding Role in Business and Technology
AI is a driving force behind transformative shifts across industries. It’s redefining workflows, unlocking entirely new capabilities, and setting the stage for businesses to innovate faster and operate smarter. Here's what industry experts think the future holds for AI as it evolves into an indispensable business tool.
Redefining Customer Experience and Business Models with AI
“Generative AI will revolutionize contact centers by providing agents with real-time, context-aware assistance, leading to 10x improvements in response times and accuracy. AI-powered quality assurance will become the norm, enabling 100% of customer interactions to be analyzed and scored automatically.
Organizations that don’t take this step will be rapidly left behind by their competitors who do. Natural language processing will advance to understand and respond to complex, multi-turn conversations, mimicking human-like comprehension in customer service scenarios. In parallel, customer expectations of barriers to service will rapidly increase - hold times, complicated phone trees, and other previously accepted roadblocks to service will no longer be tolerated by buyers.” -Ashish Nagar, CEO, Level AI.
"SaaS will shift from Software as a Service to Service as a Software, with AI tools enabling businesses to consume intelligence and functionality as integrated solutions rather than standalone systems.” -Shashank Saxena, Managing Partner, Sierra Ventures
Generative AI: From Hype to Enterprise Transformation
"From an enterprise perspective, Generative AI appears to be transitioning from the peak of inflated expectations to the trough of disillusionment to the slope of enlightenment. Many organizations are grappling with the challenges of moving beyond proof-of-concept (PoC) phases to production deployments, hindered by high costs and security concerns.
However, with the increasing focus on governance, observability, and specialized cybersecurity for AI, we anticipate a surge in enterprise adoption in 2025. Agentic AI, capable of end-to-end automation of various business operations, will have a profound impact on enterprises with built-in explainability and enterprise grounding. This contrasts with current implementations primarily focused on content generation and search bots.
As organizations navigate this evolving landscape, a human-in-the-loop approach will be crucial to ensure ethical and responsible AI usage.” -Sreedhar Kajeepeta, CTO, Innova Solutions
AI’s Impact on Industry-Specific Workflows
"Automating existing workflows will be a major internal transformation across companies in the near future. But there’s another transformation that I think will be even bigger: unlocking new capabilities. This is where we’ll see a lot of those industry-specific transformations:
- Biotech: AI is being used in drug discovery to predict how different compounds interact with proteins and rapidly identify new drug candidates. It can also simulate clinical trials and forecast outcomes before physical trials
- Healthcare: AI can analyze the genomic data of a patient and create tailored treatment plans for them
- Finance: AI can analyze way more data than human analysts and create better forecasts and risk predictions for investments
- Manufacturing: AI can create new and optimized designs for products based on various parameters and constraints, such as market trends, customer preferences, sales data, and regulatory requirements.
- Agriculture: optimize farming and livestock management based on data coming from sensors, weather, cameras, drones, etc.
- Transportation and logistics: Dynamic route optimization based on traffic, weather, and other variables
- Energy: predictive maintenance in energy equipment as well as smart grid management. We’re currently building in this space at the Forum Studio.
- Media: We’re already seeing plenty of this, but AI is changing the way we create images, music, and videos. I won’t be surprised to see fully AI-generated short films soon.
- Real estate: AI-optimized urban planning and building designs
- Education: I think this will be completely transformed. Education was already disrupted during COVID-19, and now we have AI that can understand students' learning patterns and competencies and generate learning plans and tests for them.
When people talk about how AI will take jobs, they’re focusing on the automation part of it. Still, this whole other transformation of creating new capabilities will far outweigh that in the future and bring new jobs and opportunities for employees. There are a few orders of magnitude more value to be unlocked here than just automation.” -Mike Cardamone, CEO, Forum Ventures
Maximizing AI Investments
“As we enter 2025, the typical business has moved from the AI talking and planning stages into the implementation stage. Companies already have AI solutions in place. Going forward, the challenge will become ensuring that AI investments actually deliver value.
That's why a key AI business trend in 2025 will likely be tracking the ROI of AI services and finding those that deliver the biggest boost to the business. Simply having AI in place will no longer be enough to remain competitive; a key practice for business success will be determining which AI investments are the most valuable – and, by extension, which turn out not to deliver the ROI that organizations hoped for, which will inevitably be the case for some investments.” -Matheus Dellagnelo, CEO, Indicium.
Mixed-Modality AI Applications
“The theme for 2025 will be AI-powered mixed modality. Generative AI’s rapid advancements are already transforming online, text-based interactions—a basic application most people are familiar with. But the current race is happening in voice applications, especially with AI-powered receptionists and customer service agents capable of handling phone conversations.
The next breakthrough will be combining screen and voice, leading to mixed-modality applications with powerful use cases for consumers and businesses.
For everyday consumers, mixed modality could make online grocery shopping more seamless: have a conversation with an AI about what you want to eat that week and watch as a grocery list is generated in real time. This is where today’s AI trends are converging, paving the way for AI-powered interactions that are as natural and effective as talking face-to-face.” -Forrest Zeisler, CTO & Co-founder, Jobber
Cybersecurity: A Multi-Layered Approach
Cybersecurity has become a boardroom priority this year. And next year, the stakes will be higher than ever. A multi-layered approach that combines cutting-edge technology, organizational resilience, and a proactive mindset to safeguard against evolving threats is the way forward.
Elevating Cyber Resilience
“The reality today is that all companies are dependent on information systems to conduct business, and disruptions to these systems hit at the core of their ability to deliver business outcomes - the core of their cyber resilience. Cyber Resiliency needs to be a primary objective of every organization – not just protecting your organization from a breach but having the ability to rapidly recover if breached.” -Brian Spanswick, CIO & CISO, Cohesity
Cybersecurity for Everyone
"The talent shortage means cybersecurity is everyone’s job in 2025. A recent ISC2 report found that the cybersecurity workforce grew just 0.1% YoY in 2024 due to budget cuts, layoffs, and hiring freezes despite a continued global staffing shortage. The cybersecurity skills gap is a challenge that is only going to get worse in 2025.
Due to that, the responsibility for cybersecurity will expand beyond the IT department to the company as a whole. It’s incumbent of leadership to implement cyber resiliency training and education of the workforce as a matter of onboarding and regular HR/employee programs.” -David Bennett, CEO, Object First
Consolidating Cybersecurity Tools
“The types and categories of risks that cyber security teams need to manage today have become genuinely dizzying. As a result, many companies maintain a long list of point solutions designed to address the various risks.
For example, to secure cloud environments, organizations now deploy many cloud security tools (which has become a bit of an alphabet soup of acronyms), including CSPM, CIEM, CNAPP, and CASB solutions.
I have a hard time envisioning the typical organization remaining willing to acquire and deploy each of these types of tools separately. That's why I expect that we'll see greater consolidation of cybersecurity point solutions into integrated platforms.” -Matt Hillary, CISO, Drata
A 'Trust Nothing' Era Amid Rising Fraud Risks
“AI is redefining how we communicate, how we work, and most importantly, how we trust. We can no longer implicitly trust what we see, hear, read, or receive, whether it’s an email, text, voice call, or even video call. In 2025, we’ll adopt the ‘trust nothing, verify everything’ mindset, as AI will impersonate everyone from public figures, personal contacts, and even ourselves at a record rate. We used to trust by verifying. In the future, we will only trust what's been verified. In identity, Verification will become the new Authentication." -Andre Durand, CEO, Ping Identity
SecOps and Insider Threats
“AI-powered threat hunting will play a crucial role in detecting and responding to advanced threats. As AI models continue to evolve, they will be able to identify sophisticated attacks that traditional methods might miss. By automating routine tasks and recommending effective response strategies, AI can significantly reduce the impact of security incidents and improve overall security posture.” -Chris Scheels, VP of Product Marketing at security analytics leader Gurucul
10 Top Cybersecurity Software!
Here's my pick of the 10 best software from the 10 tools reviewed.
Data: The Backbone of 2025
Data is at the heart of innovation, driving everything from AI advancements to customer experiences and business strategies. However, its true potential can only be unlocked with robust management, observability, and accessibility—transforming raw information into actionable insights while safeguarding it as a critical asset.
What do our experts think about the future of data?
Data Observability and Quality
“Reliable and healthy data will become essential to support Gen-AI models and use cases. Organizations should adopt advanced AI-driven observability tools that go beyond monitoring and extend into identifying subtle anomalies, predicting potential issues before they escalate, and ensuring unwavering data reliability. AI-enabled predictive insights translate into an eventual competitive edge.
AI and machine learning are already enhancing data observability by automating tasks like real-time monitoring and root cause analysis. Further down the road, data operations automation may be able to auto-discover pipeline issues and re-run failed processes in real time, making observability proactive and self-healing.” -Somesh Saxena, CEO & Founder, Pantomath
Hyper-Personalization in Digital Experiences
“Today, most users encounter the same digital experience as all other users with some minor personalization (i.e., different offers). In 2025, we will see digital experiences that are built on the fly using all previously known data about the user. These personalized experiences may take the form of different page layouts or navigation options, etc.
For example, imagine that a person visits an outdoor adventure retail e-commerce website. On the first page, many options are available. If the user selects men's hiking boots, the next page may change the entire website to remove all women's products and only show men's hiking boots and products that are typically purchased with hiking boots. After a purchase, if the same user returns to the website again, the entire website may be optimized for a male hiking persona. At the same time, a different user may see a totally different website if it is a woman interested in camping. Each site/page may be auto-generated by AI and adapts to every click.
This may upend the content management system industry that has been built to produce highly structured websites/apps.” -Adam Greco, Product Evangelist, Amplitude
Hybrid Cloud and Data Intelligence
"After years of ping-ponging between cloud-first strategies, then cloud repatriation and back again, the survey says: hybrid cloud is here to stay for the foreseeable future. IT leaders have realized that a mix of on-premises, edge, and cloud computing is a sensible, risk-averse strategy to satisfy the needs of different workloads and departments.
Storage and cloud vendors will adapt to this reality, while IT will need intelligence on their data assets to move data into optimal storage over its lifecycle. Optimizing a hybrid cloud storage environment will be a moving target dependent upon real-time analytics on data types, growth, and access patterns, as well as the flexibility to move data to secondary or cloud storage tiers as needed. Storage professionals can amp up their career by adopting an analytics mindset in everything they do.” -Krishna Subramanian, Co-founder & COO, Komprise
Sustainability and Green Technology
As technology's footprint grows, sustainability has shifted from an aspirational goal to an operational imperative. In 2025, green technology will take center stage, with innovations focused on energy efficiency, resource optimization, and eco-friendly infrastructure, redefining how businesses approach growth in a resource-constrained world.
GreenOps and Cloud Efficiency
“Statistics show that the public cloud now has a larger carbon footprint than even the airline industry, and a single public data center uses as much electricity as 50,000 homes. Amid new regulations, particularly in Europe, coupled with consumer pressure, we predict more interest in the concept of GreenOps.
GreenOps is the practice of minimizing a cloud environment’s carbon footprint by efficiently using cloud resources. This can only be done with visibility into an organization’s true cloud spend and a deeper understanding of how resources are allocated. Optimizing cloud use to reduce waste will be a key part of this puzzle, leading organizations and individuals to take a closer look at their data usage.” -Bill Buckley, Senior Vice President of Engineering, CloudZero
Decarbonization and Biodiversity
“Some believe that corporate sustainability initiatives were simply a result of excess liquidity in the post-Covid economy, but innovations in decarbonization, circular economy, and biodiversity have seen tremendous growth and are much more than just a transitory fad.
The redesign of existing energy infrastructure to accommodate for the workloads of AI and high-performance computing is an opportunity to go beyond integrating renewable energy sources as an add-on solution, but core components of power generation for future computing facilities.” -Melvin Lai, Senior Associate, Silicon Foundry
"Data centers as they currently function have reached the end of their roadmap. From an environmental perspective, the energy required to meet the computing demands of AI, as well as the water needed for cooling, is simply unsustainable.
Because of this, the race for lower-energy AI chips and a path to decoupling energy consumption from growth in computing power is a top priority for technology behemoths (NVIDIA) and startups alike (Normal Computing, Vaire Computing). There are a number of technologies seeking to deliver increased computing power coupled with decreased environmental impact. These include reversible computing, analog computing, and thermodynamics.
We expect to see continued interest and investment in this space as well as data centers preparing for the next phase of their existence, one where the financial and environmental costs are much lower.” -Rodolfo Rosini, CEO, Vaire Computing
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Future of Work: People, Processes, and Automation
The workplace of 2025 will look dramatically different as automation reshapes roles, processes evolve to embrace AI, and people adapt to new ways of working.
Successful companies will balance cutting-edge tools with a human-centered approach and ensure that innovation empowers rather than overwhelms teams.
Redefining Roles
“In 2025, developers will become even more relevant to the increasing demand for “actual implementation” of AI-assisted systems. Gartner projects that AI will “power a surge in demand” for software engineering. Developers will need to continue their journey from understanding only code to being able to understand the business requirements and business value of the solutions the code will bring. AI will help with the building, but the why behind the systems will ultimately drive the developers’ work.
One of the expected innovations for 2025 will be AI agents focused on ensuring the proper functioning of other AI, detecting AI-generated content (from essays at schools to deepfake videos), ensuring the accuracy of information, detecting ill-intentioned AI, and, in general, protecting users from wrongful uses of the technology.” -Miguel Baltazar, VP of Developer Relations, OutSystems
Rise of Independent Work
“Companies have become increasingly comfortable depending on contractors. We see this at Catch, too, where almost all of our team members work on a freelance basis. More people are freelancing than ever, driving more demand for individual health insurance. We are starting to see a flywheel effect where independent work is normalized and drives more independent workers.
Companies are feeling the pinch as healthcare costs rise for employers (WSJ Article). That’s going to incentivize employers to lean even more heavily on contractors and innovative options like ICHRAs.” -Laura Speyer, Co-CEO, Catch
Embracing the Challenges and Opportunities of 2025
As we look ahead to 2025, it’s clear that the tech landscape is evolving in ways that demand adaptation and deliberate, forward-thinking strategy. AI is no longer a futuristic concept—it’s here, transforming industries and redefining how we think about work.
Cybersecurity is everyone’s job now, with rising threats pushing us to rethink how we protect what matters. Sustainability isn’t optional anymore; it’s a necessity tied to both our planet and our bottom lines. And data? It’s the connective tissue driving all of this forward, but only if we manage it responsibly.
The predictions shared here are signposts pointing us toward the choices we’ll need to make as leaders. They challenge us to think critically about how we’ll balance innovation with responsibility and lead our teams with both vision and pragmatism.
The question isn’t just “What will happen next?” It’s also “What will you do next?” Let’s meet the moment, together.
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