Twelve early disruptors will independently and collectively usher in a new era of business technology.
Twelve early disruptors will independently and collectively usher in a new era of business technology.
By Bill Ray | April 16, 2025
A group of emerging technologies and trends are changing how businesses will capture value through technology. Each is significant on its own but in combination, they will transform business practices.
For example, domain language models will displace LLMs in the enterprise, but, more importantly, they will spur changes to how organizations build applications, access data, invest in computing infrastructure and secure their assets.
The 12 disruptive emerging technologies highlighted in new Gartner research fall into four categories: applications, data, infrastructure and security. Each of these areas interacts with the others to propel an emerging technology to make a widespread impact.
Intelligent simulation is one of the emerging technologies within the applications theme. It combines traditional simulations with new technologies and techniques such as generative AI, digital twins, spatial computing and quantum computing to empower simulation at unprecedented speed and scale while reducing costs. By 2032, Gartner expects intelligent simulation will underpin more than 25% of strategic business decisions.
The success of an intelligent simulation depends on having the data to operate generative AI and digital twins, the computing infrastructure to power the simulation and the security to protect it. In this way, a single emerging technology in one thematic area drives complementary technologies across the data, infrastructure and security themes.
For example, consider how demand for intelligent simulation might propel these other 2025 emerging technology trends:
Hypersynthetic data, which applies synthetic data (i.e., data that is created rather than collected) to advanced use cases, such as modeling future products, customer reactions and processes.
Algorithm-aligned silicon architectures, which are better than graphics processing units (GPUs) for running emerging generative AI workloads.
Preemptive cybersecurity, which uses advanced AI and machine learning to anticipate and neutralize cyberthreats before they materialize.
These disruptive trends in emerging tech represent new ways in which businesses will employ technologies. While they are a competitive opportunity in the near term, longer term, they will evolve into the standard.
Gain early advantage with emerging technologies by reskilling employees on how to apply them for novel solutions to new and existing business challenges.
Widespread interest in deriving value from generative AI is creating demand for a variety of supportive emerging technologies. These are clustered in four foundational areas: applications, data, infrastructure and security. For example, in applications, intelligent simulation is becoming more viable; in data, synthetic data is emerging as a way to overcome bias and limitations in real-world datasets; and so on.
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