Tech predictions: Beyond 2025

Tanya Weaver Thu 2 Jan 2025

Collected at: https://eandt.theiet.org/2025/01/02/tech-predictions-beyond-2025

Here are the technologies shaping the next five to 10 years, and the impact they will have on businesses, industry, people and climate.

It is 2025, and while there are numerous tech predictions for the year ahead , what about beyond 2025 looking five to 10 years in the future?

Capgemini is set to publish its TechnoVision top 5 tech trends to watch in 2025 report, focused on the technologies that are expected to reach an inflection point in the year ahead. 

This report will also include predictions for the technologies that will shape the next five to 10 years. Five of these include:

Distributed manufacturing

It is predicted that by 2035 we will see a decentralisation of manufacturing of an increasing number of products. While the most commodified products will still be manufactured in bulk and the most complex will still need specialist skills, the in-between will be different.

Sally Epstein, chief innovation officer at Cambridge Consultants, the deep tech consultancy within the Capgemini Group, says: “We will start seeing the production of goods at the point of sale, or even in people’s homes. 

“Underpinning this will be improved costs, accessibility and quality of additive manufacturing methods, as well as the steady introduction of bio-manufacturing.” 

It is also predicted that by 2035, manufacturing will be entering a bio-era in which we will harness the self-assembly ability of plants to grow products/parts into the shapes we need.

Energy and distributed infrastructure

It is predicted that in the years ahead households will generate and balance their own power using solar panels, battery storage and smart management systems. Combined with other decarbonised sources of generation (wind, large-scale solar and small nuclear), this will change the energy landscape.

As such, it is predicted that energy grids will become more layered and localised by 2035. 

Epstein says: “Local electricity grids with load-balancing, municipal heat networks will complement national networks. This means that our infrastructure will become layered, with national, regional, local and household generation and load balancing all working in concert with one another, for both electricity and heat. 

“This will require a great deal of automation, underpinned by AI to create a much more resilient, intelligent and secure power infrastructure.”

Automation and robotics

Human-robot automation will continue to develop, with robots handling predictable, repetitive tasks and humans managing the more complex and nuanced ones. 

Epstein says: “By 2035, the real game-changer will be the convergence of robots and humans – working in concert, not in silos.”

Advancements in both GenAI and agentive AI will see traditional robotics – hard-coded, task-specific machines – replaced by both humanoid robots and collaborative robots – or cobots – that can adapt to diverse scenarios and learn continuously from their environment. 

Epstein says: “How far the trend towards humanoid robots continues remains to be seen – our Asimovian future might happen more behind the scenes than in plain sight, but it is coming.”

Biotechnology boom

While the potential of engineering biology and its ability to transform manufacturing, develop drugs and produce materials with novel properties has been widely discussed over the years, this technology is yet to reach its scaling phase. 

According to the report, 41% of top executives believe that molecular assembly will reach maturity and become commercially viable by 2030. 

It is predicted that by 2035, bio-derived products such as gasoline and plastics will start replacing oil-based products. Advances in biotechnology will enable the scalable production of these commodities, reducing our reliance on fossil fuels and paving the way for a more sustainable future.

Artificial General Intelligence

According to the report, AI reasoning capabilities have made spectacular progress over the past five years. It is believed that this technology will reach maturity and become commercially viable by 2030, by which time we will enter an era of artificial general intelligence (AGI).

Epstein says: “We are just beginning to use AI to understand the fundamentals of areas like engineering biology. By 2035, we will have moved from this ‘machine code’ to sophisticated programming models to higher level languages that abstract away a lot of the details, and let us achieve complex, optimised products produced from organisms in ways we never could have imagined.

“This won’t just be limited to engineering biology. Quantum computing, energy management, supply chains, logistics and production will also see vast efficiencies driven by AI, working to support human endeavour as a teammate, not just a tool.”