The Energy Revolution: Powering a New Era
Everything to Grid Energy:
The traditional model of electricity, a one-way street from massive power plants to passive consumers, is becoming obsolete. The "Everything-to-Grid" vision transforms every building, vehicle, and factory from a mere electricity consumer into an active power source that can store and return power to the grid in real time.
This is made possible by a new generation of battery chemistries that break the dependence on scarce and ethically problematic metals like cobalt and nickel. In 2025, lithium-ion batteries surpassed traditional nickel-based batteries in global EV deployments for the first time, and new semiconductors are ensuring nearly all energy is preserved during round trips. The result is a distributed, intelligent energy network. In Australia, for example, households added over 180,000 home batteries in the second half of 2025 alone, and software networks now pay them to collectively stabilise the grid during demand spikes. As the World Economic Forum notes, this shifts energy planning from a utility-only concern to a core part of decisions about fleets, buildings, and data centres.
Beyond Lithium: Sodium-Ion Batteries
While the Everything-to-Grid concept relies on smarter coordination, the batteries themselves are also evolving. Sodium-ion batteries, made from abundant and cheap materials like salt, are emerging as a cheaper and safer alternative to lithium. They are poised to power everything from affordable EVs to massive grid storage arrays, helping to stabilize energy systems worldwide.
Next-Generation Nuclear
Nuclear power already provides steady, emissions-free electricity. Now, new reactor designs with alternative fuels and cooling systems are set to get more reactors online faster and more safely. Alongside other clean energy breakthroughs like green hydrogen for steel production and passive radiative cooling materials that can cool surfaces without electricity, we are building a diversified, resilient, and sustainable energy future.
Artificial Intelligence: From Tools to Agents
World Models
The AI that most of us interact with today learns from past data. But the next frontier is "world models"—a new type of AI that learns by building internal simulations of the world. This allows AI systems to understand and predict unfamiliar environments much better, making them far more capable in complex, chaotic real-world settings. This is crucial for social robotics, where humans and machines must work together seamlessly. However, as experts caution, these systems are building simulated worlds, and we have yet to fully think through the implications for companies, communities, and governments.
Generative Coding & AI Companions
The impact of AI is becoming more personal and pervasive. Generative AI coding tools are revolutionizing software development by making it faster and easier to write, test, and deploy code. Meanwhile, millions of people now interact daily with AI chatbots, and many are forming what feel like close personal bonds with them. This phenomenon is so significant that it has caught the attention of politicians, who are beginning to wake up to its potential dangers. Even the massive, power-hungry hyperscale AI data centers that underpin these technologies are a breakthrough in their own right, pushing the limits of infrastructure.
Biotechnology: Redefining Health and Life
Personalized mRNA Cancer Vaccines
One of the most promising developments in the fight against cancer is the rise of personalized mRNA vaccines. These are synthesized from a patient's own tumour mutations, training their immune system to recognise and attack cancer cells it had previously missed. Trials in pancreatic cancer and melanoma have shown encouraging results, and this technology represents a paradigm shift towards truly personalized medicine.
Exosome Drug Delivery & Gene Editing
Our ability to deliver drugs precisely is also taking a leap forward. Exosomes—the body's own molecular couriers—can be engineered to carry therapeutic cargo across biological barriers, including the blood-brain barrier, which synthetic carriers cannot reliably cross. Over 200 clinical trials have launched since 2022 for conditions ranging from cancer to neurological diseases. At the same time, gene editing is becoming more precise and accessible. In a groundbreaking case, a seven-month-old baby became the first person to receive a personalized gene-editing treatment, with a clinical trial now planned.
Precision Fermentation & PFAS Destruction
Biotechnology is also solving problems beyond human health. Precision fermentation programs microbes to produce proteins, fats, and other molecules at an industrial scale, independent of the land and climate required for conventional agriculture. This could shift food security from geography to infrastructure, with fermentation-derived dairy and egg proteins already being supplied to major food brands. Furthermore, new technologies are finally breaking the carbon-fluorine bond at the heart of "forever chemicals" (PFAS), which have caused severe environmental pollution. Commercial-scale operations are now running to destroy these molecules in municipal groundwater and industrial waste, meaning "forever chemicals may no longer have to be forever".
The Quantum Leap and Beyond
Quantum Computing
While still in its early stages, quantum computing is emerging as the next frontier, promising to extend computational capabilities far beyond classical limits. 2026 is expected to be the year quantum moves from experimental promise to early commercial impact, particularly in finance and pharmaceuticals. It will not replace classical computers but will tackle problems that are currently unsolvable, such as simulating complex molecules for drug discovery.
The Era of Convergence
The true power of these technologies will come from their convergence. AI, quantum computing, advanced robotics, and biotechnology are not evolving in isolation. The market for robotics, for instance, is projected to expand from $64.8 billion in 2025 to a staggering $376 billion by 2035. As these technologies combine, they will create entirely new product categories and business models. It is an era where technology, power, and the political economy increasingly converge, and nations and businesses that proactively integrate these tools will shape the future of digital innovation and economic resilience.
Conclusion
We are standing at the precipice of a new age. The technologies of tomorrow are not distant sci-fi fantasies; they are here, moving from the lab into commercial use and poised to scale. From a decentralized energy grid that empowers communities to personalized cancer vaccines and AI that can navigate chaos, these innovations promise to solve some of our greatest challenges.
The path forward, however, is not without its questions. As Professor Katherine Daniell of the ANU, a member of the WEF Advisory Council for the Top 10 Emerging Technologies, puts it, the goal is to find technologies that will have a significant impact in the next three to five years. The decisions made by governments, industry, and research institutions in the coming years will meaningfully shape how these technologies arrive in the world. The future is not something that happens to us; it is something we are building, one breakthrough at a time.
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