GENEVA / LAUSANNE — The World Economic Forum (WEF), in collaboration with Frontiers, has released its annual “Top 10 Emerging Technologies of 2026” report. Experts highlight a fundamental shift: the focus of innovation is moving from software and pure AI toward physical systems — energy, medicine, and materials science.
Key Technologies to Change the World
The list includes developments with the greatest potential to impact economy and society over the next five years:
- Everything-to-grid energy: Electric vehicles and buildings act as giant batteries, returning energy to the grid during peak demand.
- Direct lithium extraction: A technology to produce battery-grade lithium in hours rather than months, without harmful evaporation ponds.
- Passive radiative cooling materials: Materials that keep buildings cool without power consumption by reflecting heat directly back into space.
- PFAS destruction: New methods to break down “forever chemicals” in drinking water into harmless, natural substances.
- Precision fermentation: Brewing food ingredients and medicines using genetically programmed microbes.
- Personalized mRNA cancer vaccines: Training a patient’s immune system to find and destroy cancer cells using tailored vaccines.
- Quantum simulation for drug discovery: Using quantum computing to cut the time and cost of drug research by orders of magnitude.
- World models: AI systems that learn how the physical world behaves and predict outcomes of scenarios like natural disasters.
A Shift to the Physical Realm
Eight of the ten technologies in the report act directly on physical infrastructure. “We are seeing competitive advantage move from software toward the ability to control materials, biological processes, and industrial data,” said Frederick Fenter, Chief Executive Editor of Frontiers.
The report was produced using an advanced AI-based nomination workflow that screened more than 1,200 candidate technologies globally.
Source: Frontiers / World Economic Forum
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