Key Takeaways from the WEF 2025 Top 10 Emerging Technologies

Published on October 17th, 2025

Authored by Claudia Alarcón López, External Affairs Specialist, Strategic Partnerships 

The World Economic Forum’s Top 10 Emerging Technologies 2025 report was released during the Annual Meeting of the New Champions in Tianjin. Now in its thirteenth edition, the report has drawn record attention with over 300,000 social mentions and 56,000 downloads. From a pool of more than 250 contenders, ten breakthrough technologies were selected across three converging themes: energy, information technology, and sustainability. The findings underscore both global interest and practical relevance. 

This year’s edition introduces two new elements: a strategic outlook assessment conducted by the Dubai Future Foundation and an ecosystem readiness analysis evaluating how prepared societies are to scale emerging technologies. This also includes customary transformation maps for each technology, part of the WEF Strategic Intelligence platform. 

This September, a panel session moderated by Frederick Fenter, chief executive editor at Frontiers, brought together leading global experts to discuss some of the conclusions of this year's repot, focusing on how cutting-edge innovations can be translated from research into real-world industrial and societal applications. 

Below we offer a summary of the expertise shared during the panel session. 

“What we are trying to do is create a system where research meets national impact. We need projects that are ambitious, scalable, and relevant for both the country and the world, and to fund them in ways that allow both freedom and direction. We want to ensure that the science we support not only generates knowledge but also solves real societal problems, builds value chains, and creates jobs for India’s young population.”

Shivkumar outlined how ANRF is reforming India’s research ecosystem by combining investigator-led grants, similar to the U.S. National Science Foundation, with mission-oriented initiatives modeled on DARPA. This dual approach is designed to foster creativity while ensuring alignment with strategic goals. At its core lies the conviction that research should not only generate scientific excellence but also expand economic opportunity for India’s young population.

To illustrate, he described collaborative sensing as a platform technology. Networks of distributed, multi-purpose sensors could simultaneously support flood management, urban traffic systems, air quality monitoring, and sustainability applications. By feeding this data into AI systems, such infrastructure becomes a backbone for smarter, more resilient cities. Dr. Kalyanaraman concluded by emphasizing that the promise of emerging technologies lies not only in their technical potential but in their capacity to create real-world societal impact.

“When it comes to transformative technologies, the winners are not those who invent first, but those who combine mission, cross-pollination, ecosystems, scaling, and the courage to crash and learn. Those are the companies that ultimately change entire markets: that’s exactly the mindset fusion will require.”

Heike placed fusion energy within the broader context of how innovative races are won. She drew parallels to Tesla redefining cars as computers on wheels, aerospace-grade carbon fibers crossing into automotive, and Apple’s iPhone thriving thanks to an ecosystem of app developers. Fusion, she argued, will only succeed if it follows a similar trajectory -- crossing disciplinary boundaries, scaling supply chains, and embracing failures as learning accelerators, much like SpaceX did with its early rocket explosions.

She emphasized how quickly fusion has moved from “science fiction” to “science fact.” The U.S. National Ignition Facility’s breakthrough in achieving net energy gain marked a historic inflection point. But Freund cautioned that today’s prototypes are at the stage aviation was in the 1920s: real but not yet practical. The next hurdles -- system integration, industrial scaling, and regulatory acceptance -- will determine if fusion can power grids within the 2030s, as industry surveys increasingly predict. “Fusion is no longer a dream for our grandchildren,” she concluded. “It is a challenge for our own generation.”

“Green chemistry is not just a trend; it is the foundation of the chemical industry of the future. It is how we will remain competitive, how we will innovate, and how we will make the transition to a sustainable economy. It has brought us new materials, new processes, new companies, and it will continue to do so.”

Javier framed green chemistry as a structural shift that redefines how we imagine, teach and do chemistry. He noted that lab discoveries are being translated into industry at scale. Venture capital and corporate investments into sustainable chemistry start-ups surpassed $120 billion in 2024, and large firms are moving quickly to scale. BASF, Sabic, and Linde are piloting the world's first large-scale electrically heated steam cracking furnace, which could slash emissions by 90% if powered by renewables; Merck’s biocatalysis platforms are already cutting pharmaceutical waste by nearly half, and companies like Covestro are commercializing CO₂-to-polymer technologies at industrial scale. Together, these cases show that sustainability is not a constraint, but a driver of new industrial value chains.

He also spotlighted the promise of nanozymes -- nanomaterials engineered to act like enzymes. Unlike fragile biological catalysts, nanozymes are stable, tunable, and cost-effective. Already, they have been used to detect E. coli pathogens in minutes, degrade toxic dyes in wastewater with efficiencies above 95%, and reduce oxidative stress in tissues, opening pathways for treatments against Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. Dr. García-Matínez closed by mentioning that the industrial adoption of what’s was once in a small-scale lab proves green chemistry and nanotechnology are transforming the industry now and will continue to do so exponentially.

“One of the big challenges is that hard technologies require a very different type of financing than software. You need investors who are patient, who are willing to stay the course for ten, fifteen, sometimes twenty years. Venture capital alone cannot deliver that ... we need new models of patient capital.”

Karen started with the explanation of the Gartner Hype Cycle in the context of hard climate technologies, mentioning they surge on enthusiasm, stumble in the “post-hype dip,” and only then climb toward the plateau of productivity, once technical, financial, and social challenges are resolved. For ammonia, this trajectory has planetary consequences. The Haber-Bosch process, invented in 1913, underpins a $150 billion fertilizer industry feeding nearly half the world’s population. But ammonia now has diverse applications, serving as a hydrogen carrier, maritime shipping fuel, and grid-balancing energy vector, to mention some examples, forecasting triple on its demand by 2050 to nearly $500 billion.

Meeting that demand sustainably requires alternatives. She pointed to electrochemical methods that directly synthesize ammonia from water and air, plasma-based processes still at earlier maturity levels, and her own company’s work on Haber-Bosch 2.0, a lower-energy, more flexible thermochemical process aligned with renewables. The stakes are high: failing to decouple ammonia from fossil fuels risks undermining both food security and climate goals. For Baert, the pathway forward is clear -- leverage technological diversity while ensuring that ammonia’s next chapter is green.

As the event drew to a close, panelists converged on three themes: the cross-cutting role of AI as an enabler, the centrality of energy as the common thread, and the human courage needed to carry breakthroughs from labs to markets. 

The full event can be viewed in the recording below.  

The Top 10 Emerging Technologies 2025 report is available to download here. 

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