Whats up, and welcome to TechScape. I’m your host, Blake Montgomery, wishing you a contented New Yr’s Eve stuffed with cheer, champagne and Mariah Carey’s comically terrible rendition of Auld Lang Syne.
At present, we’re trying ahead to the subsequent yr in know-how information. I’m watching 5 developments I believe will outline the yr: datacenters will see fast proliferation past the US and China; billionaires will reap billions extra; self-driving vehicles will park themselves in a slew of brand-new locales; AI will discover its area of interest at work; and client tech will take unusual new shapes.
Datacenters blanket the globe
FILE – Vehicles drive previous information facilities that home pc servers and {hardware} required to assist trendy web use, reminiscent of synthetic intelligence, in Ashburn, Virginia, July 16, 2023. (AP Photograph/Ted Shaffrey, File) {Photograph}: Ted Shaffrey/AP
Datacenters unfold thick and quick throughout the US and UK in 2025. In 2026, the multitrillion-dollar challenge of constructing the infrastructure behind synthetic intelligence is poised to increase throughout the globe.
Look no additional than a narrative printed in the New York Occasions the day after Christmas, which catalogues the massive investments tech giants have begun pouring into India for a build-out anticipated to happen over the subsequent 5 years. Microsoft dedicated $17.5bn to setting up new datacenters in India at an occasion earlier this month. Microsoft’s CEO, Satya Nadella, didn’t even have time to depart the stage throughout that announcement earlier than rival Amazon declared it might spend $35bn by itself datacenters within the nation, based on the Occasions. Google inked a $15bn partnership for a similar factor with two Indian mega-conglomerates a month prior, and Meta, to not be outdone, is constructing a datacenter close to Google’s deliberate web site.
South-east Asia is following India’s lead, with analysts predicting double-digit progress within the variety of datacenters and computing capability in Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam. Singapore already has a lot of datacenters relative to its dimension. Australia can also be a rising regional hub. What to observe on this area: it’s relatively scorching there for the temperature-sensitive computing amenities, which implies they may devour a higher quantity of electrical energy than elsewhere – they already devour an unlimited quantity – for cooling.
Brazil is making a play to be Latin America’s datacenter vacation spot. To date, it’s working. Like India, although, the facility grid has not modernized to fulfill the big power starvation of digital infrastructure. Demand from datacenters has led to blackouts this yr. Latin America as an entire is seeing a rising resistance from environmental activists to the fast building of datacenters, which are sometimes shrouded in authorized secrecy that stops native communities from realizing how a lot electrical energy and water they may devour.
Learn extra: Energy battle: will Brazil’s booming datacenter business depart atypical individuals in the dead of night?
Learn extra: Datacenters meet resistance over environmental considerations as AI increase spreads in Latin America
Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, eager on changing into the dominant gamers in AI within the Center East and diversifying away from oil, struck about $600bn in AI offers with the US throughout Trump’s tour in Could, together with one for the largest AI campus exterior the US. The offers are mutual, with the US and its tech titans pledging to speculate tens of billions in AI infrastructure in each petrol states.
Europe’s datacenter market is rising. The continent boasts a strong and mature datacenter market, but it surely has not fostered the identical quantity of progress or attracted equal funding as has the US and China in terms of AI. Europe’s computing capability is more likely to develop subsequent yr, however maybe not as quick as different areas talked about right here.
Learn extra: ‘It’s hell for us right here’: Mumbai households endure as datacenters hold the town hooked on coal
A cautionary lesson from China, although, is that simply because a datacenter will get constructed doesn’t imply it will get used. The nation spent a lot of 2023 and 2024 dashing to construct a brand new armada of datacenters. About 150 new datacenters completed building and started operations in 2024, based on the state-affiliated China Communications Business Affiliation Knowledge Heart Committee. Now a good portion of them are sitting unused, struggling to safe clients and new funding, based on each Reuters and the MIT Know-how Evaluate. Native Chinese language shops cited by the MIT Tech Evaluate report that as much as 80% of China’s new computing capability can’t discover consumers. What’s going to the remainder of the world do if it likewise turns into saturated?
The worldwide arrival of self-driving vehicles
In November, I wrote in regards to the race between the US and China within the autonomous automobile business, which is able to see self-driving vehicles seem in main metropolises all through the world in 2026:
We’re on the verge of the worldwide arrival of self-driving vehicles. Subsequent yr, main companies from each the US and China will deploy their robotaxis to metropolises all over the world, in main expansions of their current operations. These corporations are posturing within the press like male birds preventing for a similar mate; the dance units the stage for the worldwide competitors to return.
On the US facet, there’s Waymo, Google’s driverless enterprise. The corporate has invested billions of {dollars} in Waymo prior to now 15 years. The corporate opened its robotaxi service to the general public in June 2024 in San Francisco after years of testing and has been rolling it out steadily since. Now automobiles are very seen in most of Los Angeles, and they are going to be in Washington DC, New York Metropolis and London subsequent yr.
Baidu’s Apollo Go let its taxis free in Dubai and Abu Dhabi this yr. The wheels of WeRide, one other Chinese language autonomous automobile firm, have likewise touched down within the United Arab Emirates and Singapore. All the important gamers within the Chinese language market are increasing in Europe. Vehicles made by the agency Momenta and deployed by Uber are slated to begin driving in Germany in 2026. WeRide, Baidu and Pony AI even have plans to start robotaxi service in varied European locales within the close to future. Many extra individuals are about to see self-driving vehicles in the middle of their every day lives.
Learn extra: The race begins to make the world’s finest self-driving vehicles
Billionaires are in all probability going to get richer
Ten of tech’s most well-to-do executives added an eye-popping $550bn to their fortunes in 2025, based on the Monetary Occasions. That astronomical progress exhibits no indicators of stopping subsequent yr, notably with two looming preliminary public choices: OpenAI and SpaceX, valued at $830bn and $800bn, respectively, although each these figures could rise to $1tn.
SpaceX’s buying and selling launch will add tens of billions to the online value of its CEO and co-founder, Elon Musk, who already instructions a fortune of about $600bn, based on Forbes. OpenAI’s debut on the inventory market is a bit murkier: Sam Altman has mentioned he doesn’t personal a stake within the newly for-profit model of the ChatGPT maker, so its IPO could make its backers like Microsoft and its personal staff, who personal a big chunk of the inventory, fairly wealthy whereas Altman reaps a modest revenue.
Musk can also be positioned to reap an unlimited wage from his work at Tesla. He’s now the beneficiary of two pay packages, one, value $56bn, reinstated by a company courtroom in Delaware, and the opposite, value a whopping $1tn, voted on by Tesla shareholders.
The exception to my prediction of billionaires’ ballooning fortunes could also be Larry Ellison. The super-wealthy Trump backer briefly dethroned Musk because the richest man on the planet in September as hopes of the success of his enterprise software program agency, Oracle, ran increased than they ever had. His coziness with Trump and Oracle’s involvement within the AI increase appeared like twin rocket boosters that will ship his fortune to the moon.
Only a few months later, although, Oracle is bearing the brunt of buyers’ fears of an AI bubble. Wall Avenue scrutinizes the corporate’s future commitments and the mammoth quantity of danger it has taken on to finance them. Oracle’s earnings knocked $80bn off its market capitalization.
AI does – and doesn’t – rework work
AI has remodeled productiveness in some niches. Coding, for instance, seems to be extraordinarily totally different than it did simply 5 years in the past. Customer support representatives are being changed by hated chatbots left and proper. AI has not changed worker-level productiveness in most industries, although. An MIT research that discovered 95% of corporations’ AI pilot packages failed to offer a return on funding nonetheless looms massive. Though AI just isn’t prepared for worker-replacement prime time, companies are refraining from hiring, ready for the know-how’s potential to reach, which signifies that in the present day’s jobs are being affected by bosses’ conception of the long run. For instance, Hollywood, in a dire monetary droop already, is popping to AI as a solution to full productions extra cheaply. Newspaper readers have rejected AI-generated writing, seeing it as inaccurate and unreliable. Authorized professionals have but to work out the place generative AI ought to determine into their area: chatbots cite fictitious circumstances, however summarizing prolonged and dense paperwork is an utility that does save an excessive amount of time. Subsequent yr might even see generative AI discover extra niches the place it’s genuinely helpful.
Keep tuned for extra on the topic: the Guardian will start publishing a year-long sequence on AI and the way forward for work in early 2026.
Can I curiosity you in a brand new system? Client {hardware} will get bizarre new kind components
For years now, the smartphone has been the piece of know-how that mattered most to most individuals, maybe the one one in all any significance in any respect. That system has seemed largely the identical for the higher a part of a decade, an enormous black display with some buttons on the facet. The previous few years have seen the debut of a number of totally different kind components, nevertheless – largely folding units, alongside a couple of new units meant to present AI a bodily kind. In 2026, these developments will in all probability speed up, fueled by Apple’s potential launch of a folding telephone and the hunt for a tool that can channel AI’s capabilities.
Apple’s folding telephone has been rumored for half a yr at the very least with out eliciting a denial from Cupertino. A brand new kind issue for the smartphone will come to a big and devoted viewers. Prime Androids have sported folding screens for years now, together with a brand new Samsung that folds twice, however Apple’s viewers is a captive one, locked into its software program ecosystem.
Tech corporations are feverishly engaged on a brand new AI system, determined to be the primary to unlock the enchantment of ChatGPT IRL. OpenAI spent about $6.5bn in 2025 on iPhone architect Jony Ive’s startup, which had few, if any, merchandise to talk of; the approaching yr might even see its first product. The Humane pin with its shiny founders and the Good friend necklace with its stunty subway advertising and marketing each made splashes however by no means caught on. Humane has already shuttered. Sensible glasses current a promising avenue for bringing generative and responsive AI into individuals’s on a regular basis lives, and these units are already well-liked. In 2026, good glasses appear more likely to proliferate and advance, dominated by Meta. Generative or responsive AI will in all probability additionally come to extra locations you don’t want it. Samsung already added its Bixby assistant to its fridges means again in 2024, in any case. You might end up with a wise cover in a lodge in 2026.
