Gartner, the technological research and consulting company, has announced its list of the 10 top strategic technology trends that should be explored by organisations in 2025.

Analysts from the company presented their findings at the Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo event, taking place in Orlando, Florida.

“This year’s top strategic technology trends span AI imperatives and risks, new frontiers of computing and human-machine synergy,” revealed Gene Alvarez, who serves as distinguished VP analyst at the research firm.

“Tracking these trends will help IT leaders shape the future of their organizations with responsible and ethical innovation.”

The Top Strategic Technology Trends for 2025

1. Agentic AI

The first trend revealed is agentic AI, which autonomously plans and takes actions to meet user-defined goals. It offers the promise of a virtual workforce that can offload and augment human work.

In particular, Gartner said that agentic AI has the potential to realise CIOs’ desire to increase productivity across the organisation.

The research firm has predicted that, by 2028, at least 15% of day-to-day work decisions will be made autonomously through agentic AI, up from 0% in 2024.

2. AI Governance Platforms

AI governance platforms are a part of Gartner’s evolving AI Trust, Risk, and Security Management (TRiSM) framework that enables organisations to manage the legal, ethical, and operational performance of their AI systems.

These technology solutions have the capability to create, manage, and enforce policies for responsible AI use, explain how AI systems work, and provide transparency to build trust and accountability.

Gartner’s forecasted that by 2028, organisations that implement comprehensive AI governance platforms will experience 40% fewer AI-related ethical incidents compared to those without such systems.

3. Disinformation Security

Disinformation security is an emerging category of technology that systematically discerns trust and aims to provide methodological systems for ensuring integrity, assessing authenticity, preventing impersonation, and tracking the spread of harmful information.

By 2028, the research firm predicted that 50% of enterprises will begin adopting products, services, or features designed specifically to address disinformation security use cases, up from less than 5% today.

4. Post-quantum Cryptography

Post-quantum cryptography provides data protection that is resistant to quantum computing decryption risks. As quantum computing developments have progressed over the last several years, it’s expected that there will be an end to several types of conventional cryptography that’s widely used.

It’s not easy to switch cryptography methods, Gartner noted, so organisations must have a longer lead time to ready themselves for robust protection of anything sensitive or confidential.
The consulting firm is anticipating that by 2029, advances in quantum computing will make most conventional asymmetric cryptography unsafe to use.

5. Ambient Invisible Intelligence

Ambient invisible intelligence is enabled by ultra-low cost, small smart tags and sensors which will deliver large-scale affordable tracking and sensing.

Through 2027, early examples of ambient invisible intelligence will focus on solving immediate problems, such as retail stock checking or perishable goods logistics, Gartner said, by enabling low-cost, real-time tracking and sensing of items to improve visibility and efficiency.

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6. Energy-efficient Computing

IT impacts sustainability in many ways and in 2024 the leading consideration for most IT organisations is their carbon footprint.

It’s expected by Gartner that starting in the late 2020s, several new compute technologies, such as optical, neuromorphic and novel accelerators, will emerge for special purpose tasks, such as AI and optimisation, which will use significantly less energy.

7. Hybrid Computing

Hybrid computing combines different compute, storage and network mechanisms to solve computational problems.

This form of computing helps organisations explore and solve problems which helps technologies, such as AI, perform beyond current technological limits.

Hybrid computing will be used to create highly efficient transformative innovation environments that perform more effectively than conventional environments, the research firm noted.

8. Spatial Computing

Spatial computing digitally enhances the physical world with technologies such as augmented reality and virtual reality. This is the next level of interaction between physical and virtual experiences.

By 2033, Gartner predicts spatial computing will grow to $1.7 trillion (£1.3tn~), up from $110 billion (£84.5bn~) in 2023.

9. Polyfunctional Robots

Polyfunctional machines have the capability to do more than one task and are replacing task-specific robots that are custom designed to repeatedly perform a single task.

Polyfunctional robots are designed to operate in a world with humans which will make for fast deployment and easy scalability, explained the research firm.

It’s predicted that, by 2030, 80% of humans will engage with smart robots on a daily basis, up from less than 10% today.

10. Neurological Enhancement

Gartner said that neurological enhancement improves human cognitive abilities using technologies that read and decode brain activity. This technology reads a person’s brain by using unidirectional brain-machine interfaces or bidirectional brain-machine interfaces (BBMIs).

By 2030, Gartner predicts 30% of knowledge workers will be “enhanced” by, and dependent on, technologies such as BBMIs (both employer-and-self-funded) to stay relevant with the rise of AI in the workplace, up from less than 1% in 2024.