2025’s Top 10 Emerging Technologies: From Safer Cities to Healthier Lives

The World Economic Forum’s Top 10 Emerging Technologies of 2025 identifies innovations expected to deliver tangible societal benefits within the next three to five years, addressing issues like urban congestion, pollution, disease, and climate stress.

Among the standout technologies are collaborative sensing, allowing real-time coordination between vehicles and city systems; generative watermarking, which ensures trust in digital content; and structural batteries, where energy storage is built directly into materials.

Read the full report here

This year’s breakthroughs reflect four converging trends: trust and safety in a connected world, sustainable industrial redesign, advances in human health, and energy-material integration. Technologies such as green nitrogen fixation, autonomous biochemical sensing, and engineered living therapeutics demonstrate a shift toward interdisciplinary, systems-based solutions, rather than isolated inventions.

The report—developed in partnership with Frontiers—emphasises that scaling these innovations requires investment, infrastructure, common standards, and responsible governance. With the right support, these technologies could reshape how we manage chronic illness, environmental degradation, and infrastructure challenges.

Ultimately, the path from lab to real-world benefit depends on open science, collaboration, and clear public oversight to ensure these breakthroughs serve global needs equitably despite a climate where global risks still exist.

The Top 10 Emerging Technologies of 2025

1. Collaborative Sensing – Networks of connected sensors can help vehicles, cities and emergency services share information in real time. This can improve safety, reduce traffic and respond faster to crises.

2. Generative watermarking – This technology adds invisible tags to AI-generated content, making it easier to tell what is real and what is not. It could help fight misinformation and protect trust online.

3. Green nitrogen fixation –  New ways to make fertiliser using electricity instead of fossil fuels could cut pollution and carbon emissions. It also means a more sustainable way to grow food.

4. Nanozymes –  These lab-made materials act like natural enzymes, but are stronger, cheaper and easier to use. They could improve medical tests, clean up pollution and support safer manufacturing.

5. Engineered living therapeutics – Scientists are developing new therapies using helpful bacteria that are carefully designed to deliver treatment from inside the body. This could make long-term care cheaper and more effective.

6. GLP-1s for neurodegenerative diseases – Drugs originally used for diabetes and weight loss are now showing promise in slowing diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. These treatments could offer new hope where few options exist today.

7. Autonomous biochemical sensing – These small, smart sensors can monitor health or environmental changes around the clock without needing wires or people to check them. They could help detect pollution or illness early, saving time and lives.

8. Structural battery composites – Materials that store energy and support weight, like in cars or planes, can make electric vehicles lighter and more efficient. This helps reduce emissions and improve performance.

9. Osmotic power systems – By capturing energy from where saltwater meets freshwater, these systems can produce clean electricity. They are a promising source of steady, low-impact power in coastal areas.

10. Advanced nuclear technologies – New, smaller nuclear designs and alternative cooling systems offer safer, lower-cost clean energy. As energy demand grows with electrification and AI, these reactors could play a key role in building reliable, zero-carbon power systems.