UK tech leaders have forecasted the key trends for 2025, highlighting the rise of 'Agentic AI' and a positive economic outlook.
Richard Potter, Chief Executive Officer at Peak, which utilises AI to optimise inventory levels and product pricing, has remarked on the increasing certainty of uncertainty in the business world. He noted, "there's always been uncertainty in business", describing it as the new normal in recent years.
Reflecting on the recent past, Potter mentioned, "In 2024 in particular, we've had elections in major economies, global conflict and volatile markets. The impact of this uncertainty can't be underestimated." He remains hopeful for the upcoming year, adding, "Looking to 2025, businesses should feel optimistic as we begin to come out of the existing downturn and into a more stable governmental environment. Consumer demand is likely to increase and we'll edge out of the existing recession. It may not feel like it now, but a more positive business landscape is close by."
Georgina O'Toole, Chief Analyst at TechMarketView, also expressed a cautiously optimistic outlook for 2025, referencing the Office for Budget Responsibility's (OBR) upgraded UK GDP forecasts to 2%. She stated, "growth will not be exceptional", and noted that "the OBR has downgraded its view from 2026 onwards." In light of this, she encouraged tech companies to adopt emerging technologies next year, noting, "Many UK CEOs and CIOs will be keen to take advantage of the relatively strong economic position in 2025. The phrase 'making hay while the sun shines' comes to mind, even if the sun's rays remain quite hazy."
On the topic of AI, Dr Leslie Kanthan, Chief Executive Officer of AI code optimisation company TurinTech AI, highlighted the emerging issue of 'AI Debt'. This refers to the hidden costs from hastily deployed AI-generated code. He stated, "AI-generated code often requires extensive review and optimisation before it's production-ready, diminishing the efficiency gains made in the initial code generation process."
Dr Kanthan underscored that this issue is not due to AI itself but is rather a call for more sophisticated approaches to AI-assisted development. He explained, "studies showing tools like Copilot introducing up to 41% more bugs point not to AI's limitations, but to the need for more sophisticated approaches to AI-assisted development." He believes the next evolution would be to significantly improve "the reliability, quality and performance of AI-generated code."
Tim Weil, Chief Executive Officer and Co-founder of Lumai, addressed the economic aspects of AI, saying, "Once the current hype subsides, AI's broad technical application will mean that there will be a big focus on costs - specifically the cost of inference which could make or break the business case for AI deployment. Once the cost of inference is reduced, we expect to see AI embedded into the mainstream."
The concept of 'Agentic AI', or intelligent AI assistants, is anticipated to gain prominence in 2025. Richard Potter predicts an increase in the usage of Agentic AI, explaining, "We'll also see the increase in Agentic AI in 2025 which has started to take off this year." He illustrated this with an example from travel services, where AI can handle tasks like finding suitable accommodation and completing bookings.
Leslie Kanthan elaborated that in the realm of software development, this will manifest as genuinely intelligent AI assistants. He described the future of tools with "Intelligent context modelling and multi-LLM architectures will be a new breed of tools significantly reducing the effort involved in code generation and enhancing optimisation capabilities."
Simon Baxter, Principal Analyst at TechMarketView, projected that "2025 is set to have a new dominant theme." He added that "2025 will be the year that Agentic AI really starts to find its feet", driving closer to "end-to-end automation". However, he clarified that this shift would not immediately replace humans in the workplace.
Georgia, commenting on the successful implementation of AI agents, emphasised the importance of choosing suitable business areas and use cases, as limitations of GenAI agents and Large Language Models become clearer.
The insights provided by the UK's tech leaders indicate a year of accelerated adoption of emerging technologies and AI, against a backdrop of a potentially improved economic climate in 2025.
