In the fifth edition of its annual Technology Trends Outlook, McKinsey noted growing use of cutting-edge technologies continues to apply pressure in areas including data centre power requirements and vulnerabilities involving physical networks, along with creating fresh challenges which go beyond the technical.
McKinsey identified delays in supply chains, a shortage of workers and regulatory issues as other factors which must now be considered when tackling what it refers to as scaling challenges.
“As a result, scaling now means solving not only for technical architecture and efficient design, but also for the messy, real-world challenges in talent, policy and execution,” it stated.
The issues offered a reality check in McKinsey’s look at the key technology trends which characterised 2024. The company bases its outlook on data spanning search engine queries, news articles, patents, research publications, equity investment and talent demand. Each area is screened and indexed into scores covering interest and innovation.
Base
McKinsey’s latest research highlighted AI as increasingly foundational to 13 key trends, along with being one of the fields itself.
The company explained the impact of the technology is increasingly felt through “a combination with other trends, as AI both accelerates progress within individual domains and unlocks new possibilities at the intersections, accelerating the training of robots, advancing scientific discoveries in bioengineering, optimising energy systems and much more”.
McKinsey stated “continuous innovations” are required to fully realise the potential of AI across sectors, along with noting a rapid rise in agentic iterations across enterprise and consumer technology.
It emphasised its quantitative measures of “interest and equity investment levels are as yet relatively low compared with more established trends”, but was steadfast about the pace of development of agentic AI and its broad potential uses.
AI also plays a key role in application-specific semiconductors, another key trend McKinsey identified. It explained the area is on the up due to “exponentially higher demands for computing capacity, memory and networking for AI training and inference”, giving rise to “a slew of new products” and competitors.
McKinsey stated equity investment in agentic AI hit $1.1 billion in 2024, with the technology as a whole attracting $124.3 billion.
The other fields McKinsey covered and their equity investments are:
Application-specific semiconductors – $7.5 billion
Advanced connectivity, spanning 5G, 6G, low Earth orbit satellites and more – $44.2 billion
Cloud and edge computing – $80.8 billion
Immersive-reality technologies – $6 billion
Digital trust and cybersecurity – $77.8 billion
Quantum technologies – $2 billion
Future of robotics – $7 billion
Future of mobility – $131.6 billion
Future of bioengineering – $57.3 billion
Future of space technologies – $9.3 billion
Future of energy and sustainability technologies – $223.2 billion
Source: mobileworldlive.com