AI in 2025: Building Blocks Firmly in Place
Last January, we compared ChatGPT to AI’s “Big Bang” and predicted that 2024 would be AI’s “primordial soup” year. The AI ecosystem was abounding with new ideas and potential energy. It was a ripe moment for new entrepreneurs. “There is much potential in the air, and yet it is still amorphous,” we wrote at the time. “Vision is required to convert it into something real, tangible and, ultimately, impactful.”
Today, the AI ecosystem has hardened. There are now five “finalists” in the race for biggest model. Nvidia’s highly anticipated Blackwell chip is shipping this month. Data centers, many of which were planned in early 2024, are entering full-on build mode. TSMC is building new fab capacity and Broadcom is working on custom AI chips: the entire supply chain has shifted into high gear. In every industry from healthcare to law to insurance, new AI initiatives are kicking off.
If 2024 was the primordial soup year for AI, the building blocks are now firmly in place. AI’s potential is now congealing into something real and tangible—embodied by physical data centers that are rising up all across America from Salem, PA to Round Rock, TX to Mount Pleasant, WI. If 2024 was about new ideas abounding, 2025 will be about sifting through those ideas to see which really work.
