From hype to foundation: AI at the Core of Tech Trends 2025

From Tech Trends pages to reality: AI for corporations and personal lives

Every year, after the release of Deloitte’s Tech Trends 2025 globally in December, USA hosts in subsequential January the CES® event, likely the most relevant consumer tech event in the world. We always found the relation interesting. We like to informally test Tech Trends against CES on “how many we got it right” moment, even though the report and CES aim at completely different angle, backgrounds and intentions. But here are some very interesting relations of Tech Trends 2025 and the CES:  

We are at a turning point for AI. AI is not seeing as another technological invention but rather the foundation underpinning nearly every technological breakthrough we are seeing today. Similarly as Deloitte believed that every business would be a tech-business 10 years ago, AI, just like electricity or http, is seeing empowering every business end-to-end in 10 years from now. AI is becoming part of the fabric of our organizations, woven into our lives.  

AI’s Evolution: From Novelty to Necessity

Think back on early days of the internet, when companies drove hugely efforts to coin “ with .com” onto their names as part of relevance game. Today, you will notice companies, products, and even political forces coining “with AI”. But here is the catch: Few years from now, AI no longer will be a selling point. It will be presumed, just like .com is or just like every business has its own app. 

At the CES, we saw this shift too. AI-powered advertising displays analysed group demographics to tailor content dynamically, bringing A/B testing from digital to real world. AI is blurring every edge and frontier of soft-hardware, digital-real, on-off, one can possible imagine. From washing machines, toothbrushes and even your pet won’t escape its reach.  

What’s Next for AI: Multimodal and Specialized Systems  

Looking head, two AI paradigms are set to redefine how organisations will operate. First, multimodal AI, which can operate in simple specific tasks, such as text to image, image to text, text to visuals, etc., opening up creative and operational possibilities we’ve only begun to explore. 

Second, the rise of “Agentic AI” is really a game changer. Instead of a big-brain monolithic AI, expensive, costly and difficult to tame, a number of agents trained to do one thing good among many things that they can collectively achieve. AI agents may mimic your own organization. Once you give a command to “produce a CSRD Reporting for the 2025 year”, multiple AI agents will do their own specific task. A few AI Agents retrieve the data from a specific part of a core system, others, from peripheral systems. A few AI agents, combine while a few refine. One AI agent can even orchestrate the symphony to produce the right outputs. They can operate in different environments under different conditions. With limited or extensive computer power, connection and integration.  

The Rise of Physical AI

We were promised robots in the future at organizations, and the CES is showing how the convergence of AI and robotics can affect our personal life at home in a non-distant future. With robots priced under two thousand US Dollars, some humanoid robots are capable to solve real household tasks. Finally, robots seem to be reaching a moment where they do “the dishes and laundry” allowing me time to “paint and write”, not the other way around! There is still time to reach organizations, but historically, we have seen the trend of new technology being explored as toys, before tools for home and scalable for organizations. The race is on, and Deloitte understand robots might become a norm in a few years ahead.  

The Core Modernisation: the Silent anchor Holding Back Innovation

 70% of enterprise IT budget are spent on maintain and operating existing legacy systems rather than on innovation. They are essential to business continuity, yet they minimize scalable ROI for AI initiatives in many cases. AI has a role to play in Core systems by automating code conversions, providing Intelligent System Integration, and acting as agents to maintain, retrieve and harness key points from core systems. Similar as technologies help to integrate different systems end-to-end automating interfaces or triggering actions, AI agents may delve into parts and modules from the monolithic ERP that common eyes or regular RPA automations can’t.  

Final Thoughts 

CIOs and Tech Leaders are at a pivot moment. AI is no longer the shine tool in the IT team toolboxes or reserved for tech enthusiasts, but a foundational layer that can elevate every part of their organizations. The challenge is for us all to look beyond the hype, embrace AI as the infrastructure it’s becoming and focus on solving the problems that matter most. The future will be made by leaders leading teams to use the last technologies, discussing where, when, how, most importantly, why.  

Finally, AI is reshaping industries and leaders must ensure that their organisations are equipped with the right data governance and their practitioners are morally prepared to deal with this almost ‘deity power’. The path forward requires embracing AI as both tool for innovation and a driver of responsible change. At the end of the day, clients and users of your products and services are trusting organisations are using their data responsibly, ethically, and trustily.