McKinsey’s 2025 Insights on AI, Cloud, and Cybersecurity

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McKinsey recently published their 2025 Technology Trends report. This is a very detailed report that explores the technology trends that people are writing and talking about, but it also looks at metrics such as which technologies are being supported by investment. This is an important distinction.

This led to one immediate headline for me. One of the biggest technology trends in the media at present is Agentic AI. This is the concept of digital assistants that can operate autonomously and make decisions on behalf of the user. It sounds like a great tool that could be a serious productivity boost, but McKinsey noted that 2025 investment in Agentic AI is far lower than for other important trends.

This is an interesting point, because it is one of those technologies that has dominated the headlines this year, although McKinsey does still believe that it will eventually take off. The report notes: “Although quantitative measures of interest and equity investment levels are as yet relatively low compared with more established trends, agentic AI is among the fastest growing of this year’s trends, signaling its potentially revolutionary possibilities.”

The report drills down into thirteen different technologies that are defining how companies are using technology in 2025, but I’d like to give a few comments on the three that are attracting the most investment at present.

1. Artificial Intelligence

The important change with AI is that it is changing how companies operate — and even the products and services they offer. According to McKinsey, 78% of companies are already using AI in at least one business function and 92% of executives have planned AI investment — however it remains a fast-changing area as only 1% of executives said that they have a ‘fully-mature’ AI deployment.

2. Cloud and edge computing

Data center capacity is predicted to triple between now and 2030. Just imagine this level of growth in any other area of your business. Innovative and flexible business models are now demanding that cloud infrastructure is in place – not least the use of AI throughout organizations today.

3. Digital trust and cybersecurity

This used to be the focus of a security manager or the CIO, but it must be a boardroom priority now. The ransomware attack on retailer Marks & Spencer in the UK is a good example of how this can really affect a major business. They could not accept any online orders for over 15 weeks after a ransomware attack, costing the business more than £300m in profits — a disaster for a business that was predicted to have a record year.

It is clear that of all the topics McKinsey focuses on, these three are probably the most important for corporate executives at present. I would also agree with their assessment of Agentic AI.

I have long argued that the real value of Agentic AI will never be achieved until there is a broad ability to connect to many different services — a common API that allows the agent to connect all the different services it needs to act on your behalf. Take a look at the recent agentic release from OpenAI and you can see that the large number of connectors to services such as Gmail and Github are presented as an integral part of the service.

All three of these most-invested trends are really AI stories. AI is the trend that is responsible for driving the boom in data center capacity and AI is becoming a vital tool in data security. If you can see unusual network activity in real time, allowing the security team to take rapid action, then you can prevent the damage that companies such as Marks & Spencer have suffered.

The Co-operative retail group was attacked at the same time as M&S, but their security team saw that an attack was taking place and they shut down their entire network – causing in-store chaos as payments could not be accepted – but allowing the business to be entirely back to normal in a few days.

AI investment may slow down in the near future. Although the technology is exciting, most of the companies doing the research are not actually making a profit from their work. OpenAI is making about $3.7bn in revenue and losing $5bn at present. This can’t go on forever unless AI unlocks entirely new business models.

This McKinsey report is a very good and detailed study into which technologies you should be watching in the latter part of 2025 and into 2026, but I would also keep a close eye on the investment trends – this can really reveal which technologies are more than just a media trend.

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