In the meantime, here are three technologies that we wanted to include on the 2025 list but ultimately decided not to use anymore. Even though these nominees didn’t make the cut this year, they’re worth keeping an eye on. We definitely will be.

Virtual power plants

Virtual power plants are energy systems that combine many different technologies for generating and storing electricity. They allow utilities to connect solar panels and wind turbines to grid batteries and electric vehicles and better control the flow of electricity on the grid.

During times of peak electricity consumption, software linked to smart meters could one day automatically decide to power someone else’s home by drawing power from a fully charged electric vehicle parked in a neighbor’s garage, reducing the strain on the grid reduce. The software could also figure out how to appropriately compensate the owner of an electric vehicle.

There are now an estimated 500 virtual power plants in the U.S. providing capacity of up to 60 gigawatts (that’s about as much total capacity as the U.S. grid will add this year). Some such systems are also in use in China, Japan, Croatia and Taiwan. However, many more virtual power plants would have to be configured before they have an impact on the entire network.

Useful AI agents

AI agents are currently very popular. These AI-powered helpers are supposedly supposed to plan our meetings, book our trips, and complete all sorts of tasks online on our behalf. Agents use generative models to learn how to navigate websites and desktop software (and manage our passwords and credit card information). You may interact and coordinate with other people’s agents along the way.

And there’s real development power behind it – Salesforce just launched a platform where companies can create their own customer service representatives, and Anthropic’s Claude model gains the ability to control a computer with a mouse and keyboard, just like humans.

However, it remains a major challenge to make it clear to these agents what you mean when you make specific requests and enable them to reliably take the necessary actions. Given the daunting hurdles, we believe it may take a while before they are good enough to be truly useful. AI agents may be coming, but not yet.

eVTOLs

The acronym is a joke, but you can think of electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft as a type of electric helicopter. Most versions in development are not designed to be personal vehicles; They would be flown by pilots to ferry commuters from the suburbs or to ferry visitors from the airport to the city center. One day these air taxis could fly themselves.