The so-called AI boom has been going on for more than two years now, and 2024 saw a real acceleration in both the development and the application of the technology. Expectations are high that AI will move beyond just generating text and images and morph into agents that can complete complex tasks on behalf of users. But that’s just one of many directions in which AI might move in 2025. We asked a variety of AI experts and other stakeholders a simple question: “In what ways do you think AI will have changed personal, business, or digital life by this time next year?” Here’s what 25 of them said. (The quotes have been edited for clarity and length.)

Charles Lamanna, Corporate Vice President, Business and Industry Copilot at Microsoft: “By this time next year, you’ll have a team of agents working for you. This could look like anything from an IT agent fixing tech glitches before you even notice them, a supply chain agent preventing disruptions while you sleep, sales agents breaking down silos between business systems to chase leads, and finance agents closing the books faster.”

Andi Gutmans, VP/GM of Databases, Google Cloud: “2025 is the year where dark data lights up. The majority of today’s data sits in unstructured formats such as documents, images, videos, audio, and more. AI and improved data systems will enable businesses to easily process and analyze all of this unstructured data in ways that will completely transform their ability to reason about and leverage their enterprise-wide data.”

Megh Gautam, Chief Product Officer, Crunchbase: “In 2025, AI investments will shift decisively from experimentation to execution. Companies will abandon generic AI applications in favor of targeted solutions that solve specific, high-value business problems. We’ll see this manifest in two key areas. First, the rise of AI agents—Agentic AI—handling routine but complex operational tasks. Secondly, the widespread adoption of AI tools that drive measurable improvements in core business metrics, particularly in sales optimization and customer support automation.”

Brendan Burke, Senior Analyst, Emerging Technology, Pitchbook: “A private AI company will surpass a $100 billion valuation, becoming a centicorn along with OpenAI,” Burke writes in Pitchbook’s 2025 Enterprise Software Outlook. “Leading AI companies are growing to the point where this premium revenue multiple can push their valuations over $100 billion, contributing a $17 billion market for generative AI software in 2024.” (Burke lists Anthropic, CoreWeave, and Databricks as candidates for centicorn status in 2025.)

Dr. Rajeeb Hazra, President & CEO, Quantinuum: “Looking ahead, quantum computing will begin to play a critical role in AI’s evolution, with early evidence of its impact likely emerging by 2025. One clear advancement will be the ability of quantum-AI systems to generate and analyze massive high-fidelity data sets, unlocking breakthroughs in fields like material design, climate modeling, and personalized medicine, where current data limitations constrain progress. This milestone will demonstrate the transformative potential of AI and quantum working together.”

Ritu Jyoti, VP/GM of AI, Automation, Data and Analytics Research, IDC: “High-quality data sets, cost, and talent have been critical inhibitors to scaling AI initiatives. In 2025, enterprises will double down their efforts to build curated data vaults by domain versus focusing on holistic data modernization efforts. Essentially, they will move from “waterfall projects” approach to “use-case” approach, build a minimum viable product, realize ROI, learn fast, and then expand.”

Grace Yee, Senior Director, Ethical Innovation at Adobe: “2025 will mark a pivotal shift as consumers and businesses . . . gravitate towards tools that embed ethics into their generative AI product DNA from the outset. Companies that embrace ethical innovation will gain a competitive edge, setting themselves apart in a market driven by trust and responsible AI practices.”  

Dr. Alan Cowen, CEO and Chief Scientist, Hume AI: “By the end of next year, we won’t be able to tell whether we’re talking to a voice AI or a human (AI will pass the “speech Turing test”). A few implications of this are that: (a) everyone will want their own voice AI; (b) people will form relationships with them; (c) many people will be manipulated by voice AI doing the bidding of bad actors.”

Stefan Mesken, VP of Research, DeepL: “AIs will not only understand users better, but will proactively offer suggestions, collaborate meaningfully, and adapt to individual needs. Many of these advanced, personalized capabilities already exist but are limited to researchers or developers. Working with an AI will increasingly feel like working with a smart coworker.”

Amy Wu, Partner, Menlo Ventures: “Video AI will finally cross the uncanny valley, with a major Hollywood studio integrating AI-generated video into a feature film.  Additionally, voice will solidify its place as the default interface for interacting with AI applications, redefining how users engage with technology.”

Shawn Carolan, Partner, Menlo Ventures: “We’ll see native-AI apps emerge in nearly all the large consumer categories . . . Voice interactions will replace traditional menu navigation in most apps, while AI-powered systems delivering instant, personalized customer service responses will become the norm. AI will get a face in addition to voice. Facial expressions and more simulated empathy will take Human-AI interactions to the next level.”

Scott Beechuk, Partner at Norwest Venture Partners: “By the end of 2025, roughly 20% of business software buyers’ initial interactions with vendors will happen through AI. Many AI sales development representative (SDR) products launched in 2024, and the bulk of those purchases will go live in 2025. Their success will pave the way for the next generation of sales automation in the form of AI account executives, which will begin to debut by the end of 2025 and roll out in 2026.”

Paul Drews, Managing Partner, Salesforce Ventures: “We’re in the midst of a technological shift: the transition from generative AI to agentic AI. While 2024 was all about building and testing AI models, agents are the next step in putting AI to work in the real world. Consumers should expect almost every major business they interact with to create an agent. We’ll see agents supporting customers in banking, insurance, healthcare and retail. By this time next year, agents will be a reality of our collective digital lives.”

China Widener, Vice Chair and US Technology, Media and Telecommunications Industry Leader, Deloitte: “Now, we are talking about agentic AI–intelligent assistants that can autonomously handle tasks like resolving customer issues, coding software, and detecting cyberattacks. It’s like those chatbots you’ve been chatting with are finally ready to graduate and join the workforce. By 2025, 25% of enterprises using GenAI will have started using these intelligent assistants, marking a fundamental shift in ‘who’ we work with and how we work.”

Jon Clay, VP of Threat Intelligence, Trend Micro: “AI is going to make digital and online scams far more believable and harder to detect. Next year, we’re going to see cybercriminals using hyper-personalized deepfake scams and disinformation campaigns, exploiting public data to mimic video, voices, writing styles, and behaviors that feel all too familiar. Deepfakes won’t just target individuals—businesses will face AI-driven attacks that impersonate employees, manipulate supply chains, and exploit weaknesses faster than ever before.”

Masha Bucher, founder and general partner of Day One Ventures: “AI wearable devices, including form factors like earrings and headbands, will monitor focus, productivity, mental health, and overall mental performance in real-time. Brain tracking will no longer be niche; it will become as commonplace and essential as tracking steps or heart rate, empowering individuals to optimize their mental fitness with the same precision as physical health.”

Yash Sheth, COO/cofounder of evaluation and observability company, Galileo: “Multimodal AI will become a reality. Voice will become more widely used as a user interface, especially in consumer-facing applications. AI will become further embedded in our day-to-day lives. The applications we love as consumers (e.g., Instagram, Spotify, Doordash) and as professionals (e.g., Google Workspace, Salesforce, email) will continue to integrate more and more AI functionality into their products.”

Timothy Young, CEO of Jasper: As AI becomes deeply embedded into systems and data, our relationship with it will evolve: Instead of prompting AI, we’ll be prompted by it, receiving insights, suggestions, and solutions that reshape decision-making in business and personal life. Leaders will need to manage not just the technological transformation but also the cultural shift, fostering trust, adaptability, and a shared vision for collaboration between humans and AI.

Raghu Madabushi, Director, National Grid Partners: “Energy-aware AI scaling: As LLMs grow in size and complexity, energy consumption becomes the critical bottleneck to their scalability. The narrative for 2025 will shift from simply building bigger models to optimizing training and inference processes for energy efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and sustainability.”

Dr. Hans Eriksson, Chief Medical Officer, HMNC Brain Health: “AI is poised to revolutionize mental health care by moving beyond the outdated ‘one-size-fits-all’ treatment model. By combining machine learning and genetic analyses, AI can predict mental health issues before they escalate and help match patients to the right treatment faster.”

Brandon Roberts, GVP, People Analytics and AI, ServiceNow: “AI has the potential to create 10-20% additional capacity for most organizations in the next three to five years. As organizations prioritize driving tangible value from their AI investments, we’ll see more of them doubling down on . . . building a workforce plan based on AI’s impact on roles and skills.”

German Lancioni, Chief Data Scientist for the CTO Office, McAfee: “AI is giving scammers the ability to create emails and text messages that look like they’re coming from someone you know—whether it’s a friend, family member, or even your bank. These messages are becoming more personalized, convincing, and frequent. Falling for one of these scams could lead to stolen identities, financial losses, or even someone gaining access to your personal accounts.”

Rashmi Misra, Chief AI Officer, Analog Devices: “By this time next year I predict that we’ll be using even more specialized edge-AI chips to enable tasks with much more power efficiency, speed, and overall better performance. We’ll likely see resource-constrained devices at the edge running more sophisticated AI algorithms thanks to advancements in techniques like TinyML and model quantization, which will help enable tasks like real-time speech recognition, computer vision, and predictive maintenance on small edge devices.”

Andy Sack, Cofounder of Forum3: “Over the next year, we’ll see a fundamental shift in consumer behavior as AI-powered platforms like Perplexity, ChatGPT, and Google’s SGE (Search Generative Experience) redefine search. Consumers are moving away from lists of links and toward answers and actions. Search engines are rapidly evolving to deliver clear, conversational, and actionable results powered by generative AI.”

Molly Alter, partner, Northzone: “AI will usher in far greater transparency across the healthcare value chain. Healthcare consumers will finally get insights into the actual cost of procedures, due to AI tools that predict costs relative to individual insurance plans and utilization. And there will be greater visibility into patients’ disease progressions, thanks to the massive unlock of data that AI transcription software unlocks.”