Executive Summary: What are the Top 10 Market Trends for 2026?

 

 

A Snapshot of the Global Market in 2026

Slower but Positive Growth

2026 opens with a global economy that is expanding, but at a meaningfully slower pace than the decade before COVID-19. The IMF projects global growth at 3.3% in both 2025 and 2026, well below the 2000-2019 average of 3.7%.

Global headline inflation is expected to decline to 4.2 percent in 2025 and to 3.5 percent in 2026. This is to target earlier in advanced economies than in emerging markets and developing economies

 

Credit: IMF

 

The OECD likewise expects the global economy to settle at 2.9% growth in 2025 to 2026. This is slower under tighter financial conditions and in emerging markets like India, where the economic growth is projected to be 6.3% in FY 2025-26, while Indonesia is expected to grow at 4.8% in 2026.

 

Credit: OECD

 

Meanwhile, UNCTAD forecasts the world economy growing at 2.6% through 2026.

Fragmented Globalization & Supply-Chain Rewiring

In the next two years, globalization will become regionally concentrated, politically shaped, and structurally slower. The WTO sharply downgraded its 2026 merchandise trade outlook to 0.5% growth from an earlier forecast of 1.8%.

 

 

At the same time, World Bank research reveals clear evidence of US “friend-shoring,” as investment migrates toward politically aligned regions and more localized supply hubs.

AI Moving from Hype to Utility

2026 is the year AI meaningfully shifts from experimentation to infrastructure-level adoption. Organizations are also beginning to explore opportunities with AI agent systems based on foundation models capable of acting in the real world, planning, and executing multiple steps in a workflow.

Twenty-three percent of respondents report their organizations are scaling an agentic AI system somewhere in their enterprises, and an additional 39 percent say they have begun experimenting with AI agents.

Early ROI signals are strong: EY’s 2025 CFO survey finds Indian enterprises reporting 43% to 45% productivity gains due to GenAI.

AI’s physical footprint also becomes impossible to ignore. The IEA’s 2025 Energy and AI report projects that global electricity demand from data centres will more than double to around 945 TWh by 2030 which is slightly more than Japan’s current annual electricity use with AI-optimized data centers as the main driver. This pushes AI firmly into energy and grid-infrastructure planning, not just software deployment

Climate & Energy Transition Pressure

Despite record investment in clean energy, the climate challenge intensifies going into 2026. UNEP’s Emissions Gap Report 2025 shows global greenhouse gas emissions reaching a record 57.7 GtCO2e in 2024, a 2.3% increase from 2023. Even if all current pledges (NDCs) are fully implemented, projected warming over this century remains around 2.3 to 2.5°C, and based on policies currently in place, the world is still heading for up to 2.8°C of warming

At the same time, the IEA estimates an increase in capital flows to the energy sector that is set to rise to USD 3.3 trillion, a 2% rise in real terms in 2024.

 

 

Yet these investment gains coexist with escalating physical and regulatory risks. UNEP’s Emissions Gap Report 2025 finds that global temperatures are likely to exceed the 1.5°C threshold within the next decade. This is a level that scientists warn will destabilize climate systems and drive a surge in droughts, floods, superstorms, and other extreme weather, therefore intensifying pressure for stronger policy responses.

Top 10 Market Trends for 2026

1. AI Moves from Experimentation to Running the Business

By late 2025, AI shifts from pilots to day-to-day operations. McKinsey’s 2025 State of AI shows 78% of organizations deploy AI in at least one business function, up from 55% two years earlier, with IT seeing the fastest 6-month increase at 36%.

 

 

IBM’s Global AI Adoption Index shows 42% of enterprises have deployed AI, 40% are still experimenting, and 59% accelerated rollouts in the last two years. By 2026, core workflows like invoice processing, claims triage, customer chats, forecasting, and code changes run through AI by default, with humans mainly handling oversight.

AI becomes a structural enterprise layer as the global market heads toward USD 3.5 trillion by 2033 at a 31.5% CAGR, spreading across automotive, healthcare, retail, finance, and manufacturing.

Deloitte’s 2024-25 State of Generative AI finds nearly all organizations report measurable ROI, with 20% achieving ROI above 30% and 74% saying their top initiative meets or exceeds expectations.

 

Credit: Deloitte

 

A recent SAS and Coleman Parkes study shows that more than 85% of marketers are already using generative AI tools, and 62% of marketers have a strong understanding of AI.

63% of organizations that are slower to adopt advanced AI technologies are reporting ROI from GenAI initiatives.

Operational changes are most visible in finance, IT, marketing, and service operations. McKinsey notes AI is now standard in these functions, and high performers redesign workflows end-to-end instead of layering tools on legacy processes.

 

 

Deloitte’s 2025 AI ROI analysis finds that 15% of respondents using generative AI say their organizations already achieve significant, measurable ROI, and another 38% expect to reach that point within one year of investing.

 

Credit: Deloitte

 

However, MIT’s NANDA research finds only 5% of GenAI deployments create clear P&L impact today, with workflow-deep, specialized vendors outperforming generic tools.

Omega Healthcare runs UiPath’s AI document processing across hundreds of millions of annual digital transactions, saving more than 15 000 hours per month while reducing documentation time by 40% and turnaround by 50% and delivering 99.5% accuracy and around 30% ROI for clients.

Klarna’s AI assistant has handled 2.3 million conversations, managing roughly two-thirds of all service chats while cutting resolution time from 11 minutes to under 2 and reducing repeat inquiries by 25%.

By 2026, AI will resolve most routine interactions across banking, telecom, e-commerce, and travel, with humans stepping in only for complex exceptions.

Spotlighting an innovator: Shift

US-based startup Shift offers an AI workspace, Basis, for investment and finance teams. It consolidates a firm’s fragmented data, such as research notes, financial models, filings, communications, and market data, into a centralized workspace.

With Basis, public and private equity teams gain unified search, AI summaries, pattern detection with alerting, and real-time collaboration dashboards.

The platform also transforms data with metadata and classification so that analysts are able to query across all their firm’s knowledge in a single database.

2. Copilots & Agents Take Over Routine Knowledge Work

Generative AI has already entered day-to-day knowledge work at scale, setting the stage for copilots and autonomous agents to become default productivity infrastructure by 2026.

Microsoft’s 2024 Work Trend Index reports that 75% of global knowledge workers now utilize AI at work, with 78% bringing their own AI tools. McKinsey’s 2024 survey reinforces this shift, finding that 65% of organizations deploy generative AI in at least one function, with the highest penetration in marketing, sales, customer operations, and software development.

By mid-decade, office workers increasingly open email, documents, CRM, and ticketing systems with copilots already active, while manual first drafts of documents, briefs, and summaries recede into the background.

Spending patterns show copilots hardening into a structural layer. IDC estimates that worldwide spending on generative-AI-centric software and services will surge to about USD 39.6 billion in 2028, with a substantial share flowing to copilots embedded across productivity suites, CRM, and contact-center platforms.

At the platform layer, IDC expects worldwide revenue for AI platform software to reach USD 153 billion by 2028. This shows how quickly enterprises standardize on AI foundations that enable copilots for every employee rather than a select few.

McKinsey estimates that generative AI could create USD 2.6 to 4.4 trillion in annual value and that generative AI and other technologies together can absorb 60 to 70% of employees’ time today through automation. These signals point to a 2026 workplace where routine documentation, meeting notes, and status reports are pre-assembled by AI agents while humans focus on validation and decision-making.

Forrester’s Total Economic Impact study of Microsoft 365 Copilot models a 116% three-year ROI and USD 19.7 million net present value, largely from saving nine hours per user per month on drafting, summarizing, and information searches.

Forrester also finds that SMBs see 51% of business reports reducing supply chain costs by 1 to 10%, and 59% of businesses lowering operating costs by 1 to 20%. GitHub reports that Copilot users complete tasks 55% faster than developers who do not integrate it.

 

Credit: Microsoft

 

Across knowledge work, Microsoft’s internal studies show early Copilot users are 29% faster on writing, summarization, and reasoning tasks, with 70% reporting higher productivity.

Microsoft’s customer support organization deployed Copilot in Dynamics 365 Customer Service, reducing average handle time by 12% for low-severity chat cases through automated case summarization and faster retrieval of relevant knowledge articles.

At Boston Consulting Group, a large-scale field experiment found that consultants using GPT-4 completed tasks 25.1% faster, produced 12.2% more outputs, and delivered work rated over 40% higher in quality. About 90% of BCG’s 33 000 employees now employ AI tools, with roughly half using them daily and reinvesting 70% of time savings into higher-value client work.

Spotlighting an innovator: Future AGI

US-based startup FutureAGI provides an AI agent engineering and optimization platform that enables enterprises to evaluate, refine, and operationalize LLM-based agents at scale.

The platform replaces manual review with AI-driven critique agents that score outputs for accuracy, safety, relevance, latency, and groundedness. It aggregates results into an evaluation layer that allows product, engineering, and QA teams to understand performance patterns across prompts, workflows, and model configurations.

FutureAGI also offers trace-level observability that captures each step in an agent’s reasoning and tool use. This enables teams to pinpoint failure modes, compare model variants, and run structured experiments.

Its orchestration environment further allows organizations to design multi-agent workflows, test routing strategies, and iterate configurations without extensive code changes.

3. Hybrid Cloud & 5G Become the Default Digital Backbone

Gartner forecasts worldwide public cloud end-user spending at USD 723.4 billion in 2025 and expects 90% of organizations to adopt hybrid cloud by 2027. Ericsson projects 5G subscriptions will reach 2.9 billion in 2025 and 6.4 billion by 2031, about two-thirds of mobile lines.

By 2026, mid-to-large enterprises will run core systems across two public clouds plus local environments, while plants, warehouses, and fleets will apply 5G as the last-mile link for continuous data and responsive applications.

 

Credit: Ericsson

 

Grand View Research and Precedence Research both value the hybrid cloud market at USD 293.7 billion by 2030, a 14.2% CAGR. The private 5G market is expected to exceed USD 36.08 billion by 2030, growing at a 54.1% CAGR. IoT Analytics forecasts 5G IoT connections will surpass 800 million by 2030 at a 59% CAGR.

Flexera’s 2024 State of the Cloud report notes 89% of organizations adopt multiple clouds and 61% of large enterprises employ multi-cloud FinOps and security tools.

 

Credit: Flexera

 

By 2026, 5G links field assets so machines, vehicles, and remote sites send continuous telemetry into hybrid-cloud environments. Athenahealth leveraged AWS Local Zones and AWS Outposts to keep latency-sensitive clinical workflows near on-prem data while scaling cloud-native services.

Schneider Electric’s Shanghai smart factory uses on-prem 5G that raises line load rates to 80% and cuts floor space by 50%. A Celona private 5G LAN eliminates Wi-Fi dead zones across a 700 000-square-foot warehouse and 560 000-square-foot yard and reduced network TCO by 32%.

Ericsson’s Tallinn factory combines private LTE/5G, IoT, and machine learning to lift efficiency by up to 25%, while NEC’s local 5G-enabled autonomous transport system at the Kakegawa factory in Japan delivers roughly 30% higher production efficiency. By 2026, single-cloud, wired-only architectures will lag peers on hybrid-cloud-plus-5G backbones in AI deployment speed, outage risk, and unit costs.

Spotlighting an innovator: Critical Cloud

UK-based startup Critical Cloud provides an AI-augmented, human-led cloud operations platform. It performs engineering-led operations across AWS, Azure, and Heroku. It also combines observability, incident response, and ongoing improvement into a single operating layer.

The platform centralizes telemetry and operational workflows to support distributed, latency-sensitive applications that increasingly rely on hybrid cloud and edge connectivity.

Critical Cloud’s services include always-on incident management, Slack-native real-time incident response, and managed Datadog. This gives teams direct access to experienced SRE and DevOps engineers instead of traditional ticket-based MSP support. AI-augmented tooling detects issues faster, reduces alert noise, and continuously improves performance and security.

4. EVs, Renewables, and Batteries Redraw the Energy & Mobility Map

By 2026, electric vehicles, renewables, and batteries will increasingly look like the default energy-mobility system. The IEA reports global electric car sales neared 14 million in 2023 (18% of all cars sold) and rose to about 17 million in 2024, or more than one in five new cars.

Virta and the IEA estimate the global EV fleet sales to exceed 20 million vehicles in 2025. McKinsey projects annual EV sales rising to roughly 40 million by 2030. This signals EVs as the growth engine of light-duty transport.

The IEA projects annual renewable capacity additions rising to almost 935 GW by 2030, with solar and wind driving nearly all growth as their levelized costs undercut fossil alternatives in most regions. On this trajectory, renewables are forecast to reach about 46% of global electricity by 2030.

 

 

Storage build-out closes the loop between volatile renewables and firm power. The global energy-storage installations are growing around 21% annually to reach 137 GW / 442 GWh by 2030.

Utilities increasingly contract solar and wind paired with storage, and grid planners in North America, Europe, China, and India prioritize battery-backed renewable corridors over new coal baseload.

South Australia’s 150 MW / 193.5 MWh Hornsdale Power Reserve responds within 100 milliseconds. This reduces FCAS prices by about 91% (USD 470/MWh to USD 40/MWh) and saves consumers an estimated AUD 116 million. A 125 MW / 250 MWh Megapack project in Texas supports grid stability as wind and solar scale.

On the demand side, the IEA’s Global EV Outlook 2025 notes that more than 20% of all cars sold worldwide in 2024 were electric, with 2024 sales alone exceeding total global EV sales in 2020; in China, two-thirds of battery-electric cars sold in 2024 were already cheaper than comparable internal-combustion models.

 

 

By 2026, fleet managers will increasingly treat EVs as the default for urban and regional fleets. Digital orchestration platforms show how distributed assets are turning into flexible system resources. Octopus Energy’s Kraken manages over 500 000 devices and around 2 GW of domestic power that saved consumers more than USD 200 million annually and avoided 27 million tonnes of CO2 emissions, while reducing UK carbon emissions by about 2%.

Spotlighting an innovator: MiloDrive

Indian startup MiloDrive builds an EV-native fleet operating system that implements AI and sensor data.

The platform combines in-vehicle telemetry, battery, and vehicle health data, and trip-level operating metrics into a single interface.

MiloDrive’s OS layers AI-driven analytics on top of this data to surface early warning signals and fleet risk hotspots. It scores trips and drivers, highlights patterns linked to accidents, downtime, or excessive operating costs, and recommends targeted interventions such as coaching, route adjustments, or vehicle rotation.

The OS fuses EV telematics, driver behavior insights, and fleet risk intelligence into a single EV fleet OS while keeping safety, uptime, and unit economics under tight control.

5. Security & Privacy Become Non-Negotiable Design Rules

Security and privacy will shift from add-on controls to core digital constraints for digital product platforms and AI systems. IBM’s 2024 Cost of a Data Breach report puts the global average breach at USD 4.88 million, up 10% year over year.

At the same time, the Global Cybersecurity Outlook 2025 finds that 72% of organizations say cyber risks have risen in the past year, with adversarial use of generative AI emerging as a top concern. As a result, new products and AI initiatives increasingly require demonstrable security by design and privacy by design embedded into architecture, vendor selection, and daily operations.

Gartner expects cybersecurity spending to rise 15% in 2025, from USD 183.9 billion to about USD 212 billion. The global cybersecurity market size is expected to reach USD 500.70 billion by 2030.

Security-by-design subsegments are scaling faster. The zero trust security market is expected to reach nearly USD 88.78 billion by 2030 from 2025 with a 16.30% CAGR. Privacy management and data-privacy software markets are projected to reach USD 30.15 billion by 2030 at a 39.5% CAGR, driven by regulatory pressure and data-intensive AI workloads. By 2026, automated privacy tooling and zero-trust controls will become table stakes in regulated sectors.

Cisco’s 2024 Data Privacy Benchmark Study shows 94% of organizations say customers will not buy without proper data protection, and 96% view privacy as a business imperative.

 

Credit: Cisco

 

Cisco also finds that 95% report privacy investments deliver positive returns with an average of 1.6x ROI, while 98% say external privacy certifications influence purchasing decisions. By 2026, privacy controls will factor directly into RFPs, revenue forecasts, and brand equity.

Regulations such as NIS2, DORA, and the Cyber Resilience Act move from policy to enforceable requirements. IBM’s 2024 analysis shows organizations using security AI and automation reduce breach costs by an average of USD 2.2 million and shorten the breach lifecycle by up to 292 days.

Spotlighting an innovator: Nestria AI

Singaporean startup Nestria AI provides an AI assurance platform that secures enterprise and agentic AI systems across their lifecycle.

The platform maps risk across models, prompts, APIs, and dependencies, and verifies integrity and provenance to prevent AI supply chain threats and shadow AI.

It then enforces runtime policies to block unsafe behaviors and adversarial actions while guarding against harmful inputs and outputs at inference.

The platform combines deep visibility, real-time threat orchestration, and verifiable guardrails to support organizations in regulated sectors to scale generative and multi-agent AI with predictable, compliant, and trustworthy behavior.

 

 

6. ESG, Circularity, and Packaging Standards Become the Price of Entry

In 2025, ESG and circularity have shifted decisively to gatekeepers for capital, shelf presence, and market access. 71% of investors expect sustainability to sit at the core of corporate strategy.

At the same time, 90% of S&P 500 companies now publish ESG reports. This makes disclosure and target-setting a standard practice. By 2026, credible ESG performance, circular design, and compliant packaging will become minimum requirements across global value chains.

The global sustainable packaging market will reach USD 448.5 billion by 2030 at a 7.6% CAGR. Policy pressure intensifies this shift. 63 countries now operate extended producer responsibility (EPR) systems for packaging.

Also, seven US states have active EPR laws now. By 2026, unrecyclable and non-compliant packaging will become economically and legally untenable for brands operating internationally.

Europe anchors these expectations in binding 2026 compliance. The EU Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR) mandates recyclability, recycled content, and material-specific waste reduction across nearly all packaging placed on the EU market.

PPWR requires packaging waste cuts of 5% by 2030, 10% by 2035, and 15% by 2040, and sets reuse targets, such as at least 10% reusable transport and beverage packaging by 2030. For FMCG, pharma, and e-commerce firms, packaging design in 2026 becomes a compliance-driven engineering decision.

Over 35 US states now operate EPR laws across sectors that make brands calculate the lifecycle cost of their materials and shift to lighter or mono-material formats that can be recycled at scale. India’s plastic-credit market is projected to grow 70% to USD 1.67 billion by 2030, which drives cross-team SKU redesign.

In the US, California’s Plastic Pollution Prevention and Packaging Producer Responsibility Act requires producers to begin detailed reporting on plastic packaging volumes and sets a path for 100% of single-use packaging to be recyclable or compostable and 65% of plastic packaging to be recycled by 2032.

For consumers in 2026, this translates into more refillable containers, mono-material packs with explicit recyclability claims, and fewer mixed materials in food, beverage, personal care, and household categories.

Spotlighting an innovator: Radical Dot

German startup Radical Dot develops a circular plastics platform that combines advanced chemical recycling with closed-loop logistics for packaging.

Its low-temperature catalytic process converts mixed and hard-to-recycle plastic waste into key chemical building blocks that enable brands and packaging producers to replace fossil feedstocks with recycled carbon.

Radical Dot’s approach is feedstock-agnostic to handle contaminated and mixed plastic streams that conventional recycling systems cannot process.

The platform turns complex plastic waste into low-carbon inputs for the chemical and packaging industries.

7. Short-Form Video & Creators Take Over the Shopping Journey

Short-form video has become the dominant format for product discovery. HubSpot reports that 73% of consumers prefer watching a short-form video to learn about a product or service. This indicates that vertical video now surpasses static ads or blogs as the default research format.

 

Credit: Wyzowl

 

YouTube Shorts alone reaches 2 billion monthly active users, generates more than 200 billion daily views, and posts the highest short-form engagement rate at 5.91%. This means creator-led short videos will be the first touch points for categories such as beauty, fashion, home, and gadgets.

Monetization is scaling at the same speed. The global social commerce market will be at USD 17.83 trillion by 2033 with a 36.4% CAGR. In parallel, the creator-economy market is expected to reach USD 1.35 trillion by 2033 at a 23.3% CAGR. Together, these curves indicate that leading consumer brands will treat short-form creators as a permanent distribution channel with dedicated profit and loss.

Short-video commerce platforms show how this reshapes the funnel. TikTok Shop’s global GMV reached an estimated USD 32.6 billion, and the US became the biggest market for TikTok Shop, reaching USD 9 billion

In Southeast Asia, TikTok Shop nearly doubled regional GMV to USD 25 to 30 billion and reached around USD 140 million in daily GMV in early 2025.

Business Insider reports that Black Friday-Cyber Monday 2025 generated over USD 500 million in US TikTok Shop sales, and eMarketer now projects USD 15.8 billion in US TikTok Shop sales in 2025. By 2026, scrolling a feed and browsing a store will be effectively the same behavior in major consumer markets.

HubSpot finds short-form video is now marketers’ top ROI format, while Firework reports that shoppable-video deployments can raise conversion rates from 2.8% to over 14%.

The Fresh Market embedded short-form and live shoppable video across its owned channels and generated 18.7x the industry average engagement and 6.7x higher click-through rates.

The future shopping journey will be users watching a creator demonstrate a product, tapping a tag, and checking out without leaving the app or moving seamlessly into a retailer’s mini-player with fully shoppable video.

Spotlighting an innovator: Bazr

Italian startup Bazr offers a live shopping platform that connects users, creators, and brands in a single app.

The app lets consumers discover and buy products in real time while watching creator-led livestreams, with in-stream purchasing that turns inspiration into one-tap checkout.

Bazr supports running live demos and collaborative shows with creators, while creators monetize their audiences by curating products and hosting interactive shopping sessions.

The platform is a combination of entertainment, product storytelling, and instant purchase in one experience.

8. Office Work and Healthcare Normalize into Hybrid & Virtual Models

Hybrid work and telehealth had already stabilized into a durable operating model. Research shows that about 29% of all paid US workdays were remote in April 2025, while Gallup reports that, as of Q2 2025, remote-capable US employees are split across 51% hybrid, 28% fully remote, and 21% fully on-site.

 

Credit: Gallup

 

Employer expectations to work from home are stabilizing around 2 to 2.2 days per week. Research finds that hybrid models reduce attrition by about one-third.

 

 

Healthcare is following the same virtual-first trajectory for non-emergency care. Kaiser Permanente delivered 32% of outpatient visits via telehealth in 2023. An open study finds that 43% of 5437 US adults who had a healthcare visit in 2022 used telemedicine i.e. 70% video visits and 30% audio-only visits.

One-third of primary care is now delivered through telehealth. While meta-analyses find that telemedicine for chronic conditions reduces hospitalizations (RR 0.78) and all-cause mortality (RR 0.84).

Market signals reinforce that virtual delivery will be mainstream. The global telehealth market will be at USD 455.3 billion by 2030 at a 24.7% CAGR. The digital health market is expected to rise to USD 946.0 billion by 2030 at a 22.2% CAGR.

For individuals, daily life becomes fluid. JAMA Network Open reports that e-visits in an integrated system accounted for 58% of UTI consultations and 24% of acne consultations, with similar or lower follow-up rates than in-person care.

Hybrid workers also gain fewer commutes, more caregiving flexibility, and easier access to virtual mental health and coaching services.

Together, these signals suggest most knowledge workers will expect two to three remote days per week as a baseline, while patients increasingly encounter a virtual front door for most non-emergency care.

Spotlighting an innovator: Virtest

Spanish startup Virtest builds a health-tech platform that integrates medical imaging, virtual testing, and 3D simulation to support personalized cardiovascular care.

Its virtual implantation of devices for the left atrial appendages (VIDAA) solution transforms computed tomography (CT) scans and other imaging data into patient-specific 3D heart and vessel models.

It supports clinicians to visualize anatomy, assess device fit, and simulate different intervention scenarios before entering the cath lab.

Virtest combines digital twins with in-silico flow simulations to test device behavior virtually, compare options, and reduce procedural risk.

9. Sensors, Robots & Immersive Tools Redraw Frontline Operations

Frontline work had already shifted from manual, paper-driven routines to sensor-rich and robot-assisted environments. The International Federation of Robotics reports 4.28 million industrial robots operating in factories worldwide in 2023, up 10% year over year, with annual installations surpassing 541 302 units for the third consecutive year.

In parallel, the IoT sensors market is projected to reach USD 106.01 billion by 2030 at a 36.8% CAGR.

 

 

By 2026, these adoption curves will mean that a typical frontline site, such as a factory, warehouse, mine, or hospital, will feature dense sensor grids, collaborative robots, autonomous mobile robots (AMRs), and augmented reality (AR) headsets as standard equipment.

Next Move Strategy Consulting projects the global warehouse automation market will rise to USD 54.60 billion by 2030 at an 11.7% CAGR as fulfillment centers accelerate robotic picking and automated storage and retrieval systems.

IoT Analytics expects the installed base of connected IoT devices to expand to 39 billion by 2030. These trajectories imply that by mid-decade, most large operators will run at least one lighthouse automated facility, and mid-sized companies will face increased competitive pressure to match higher safety, throughput, and traceability benchmarks.

Immersive tools like AR or VR training market will rise to USD 79.4 billion by 2033 at 30.9% CAGR. A VR training study finds learners are 4x faster than in classroom settings and up to 275% more confident applying new skills.

In the future, employers will shift safety, equipment, and soft-skill training into immersive formats to reduce downtime and travel. Meanwhile, robots and vision-guided systems will automate welding, palletizing, and inspection, while IoT sensors monitor vibration, energy, and temperature to trigger predictive maintenance. Warehouses will blend AMRs and human pickers using wearables and heads-up displays.

Spotlighting an innovator: RobotEye

Turkish startup RobotEye develops AI-powered, unmanned smart surveillance systems with edge processing and satellite connectivity for high-risk and remote environments.

Its smart sensors and camera units detect humans, vehicles, and other objects autonomously in large, hard-to-patrol areas, then analyze footage on-device to reduce false alarms and bandwidth needs.

Integrated command-and-control software aggregates data from multiple devices and trail cameras that deliver real-time alerts and situational awareness to defense, border security, and wildlife protection teams.

RobotEye enables continuous monitoring without requiring permanent human presence, thereby strengthening border protection, critical infrastructure security, and conservation efforts.

10. Banking Recedes as Finance Embeds into Everyday Apps

Core financial interactions for many consumers already occur inside non-bank apps. 4.5 billion digital wallet users in 2025 are rising to 6 billion by 2030. Ease of checkout and security have become important for users of digital payment, as 74% of US consumers and 71% of Europeans choose digital wallets for easier, faster checkout.

 

 

In India, by 2025, UPI will process more than 130 billion transactions. India’s instant payment system and UPI accounted for over 75% of transaction volumes, with over 13 billion transactions processed monthly. These indicate that consumers expect to pay, save, borrow, insure, and invest inside the apps.

Grand View Research estimates embedded finance at USD 588.49 billion by 2030 at a 32.8% CAGR. Banking-as-a-Service, which enables non-banks to access regulated infrastructure via APIs, is expected to reach USD 72.14 billion by 2032 at a 13.1% CAGR.

Embedded credit accelerates the shift as the buy now, pay later (BNPL) market is reaching USD 80.15 billion by 2033 at a 27% CAGR. These curves indicate that many small-ticket credit decisions will occur at checkout, not through bank applications.

Platform behavior supports this. Stripe notes Shopify and Housecall Pro embed accounts, cards, and financing to become one-stop shops and improve retention. Shopify Payments processes 62% of gross merchandise volume in 2024, with 90% merchant adoption. Uber’s in-app payments drive 87% rider preference, delivered a 15% retention lift in its first year, and cut administrative expenses by 25%.

India delayed imposing a UPI market-share cap until December 2026 to avoid disrupting the system. As of November 2024, PhonePe holds 47.8% and Google Pay 37% of UPI payments.

A Qorus-VeriPark analysis shows Rabobank’s embedded-lending widget lets bol.com sellers apply within five minutes and integrate in as little as 24 hours. Solaris supports around five million customers via partners by embedding licensed products directly into small and medium-sized enterprises’ (SME) platforms.

 

Credit: VeriPark

 

ROI signals are strong. For instance, Unit says banks on its stack serve 1.5 million end customers and hold USD 1 billion in deposits via platform channels. Solaris and IBS Intelligence find 96% of European businesses plan embedded payments and 94% plan embedded banking. YouLend reports 3 to 5x returns for platforms via higher revenue, retention, and lifetime value.

Spotlighting an innovator: Husk

Belgian startup Husk offers a smart spending platform to manage costs and cash flow more efficiently.

The platform combines corporate cards with built-in credit, real-time transaction insights, and cash flow management in a single interface. This gives founders and finance teams instant visibility into spending patterns, runway, and liquidity across accounts and teams.

Husk’s dynamic risk model underwrites early-stage startups with limited financial history. Its integrations with providers like Stripe and Mastercard enable flexible payment options and controlled card programs.

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