Ten Tech Predictions for 2025

1. Jeremy Hansen Will Fly to the Moon

For the first time in history, a Canadian astronaut will venture to—or rather, near—the moon. Jeremy Hansen, a 48-year-old pilot from London, Ontario, will fly with three American astronauts on the Artemis II Mission: a NASA-led, 10-day lunar flyby. The main goal is to confirm that all the spacecraft’s systems operate as designed. The mission is considered a crucial step in establishing NASA’s long-term presence on the moon and, eventually, Mars. Hansen, a father of three, has been training intensively at NASA facilities in Houston and Cape Canaveral. He launches in September.

2. Rural Ontario Will Plug Into High-Speed Internet

By the end of 2025, the Ontario government aims to have every community connected to high-speed internet. It’s a lofty goal—a million Ontarians still don’t have high-speed connections—but the province is committing nearly $4 billion to the effort. Last summer, it announced that it had at that point finalized more than $2.4 billion for 270 high-speed projects, which will connect more than 500,000 homes. Similar efforts are under way in Alberta, B.C. and other provinces—all meaningful steps toward the federal government’s goal of connecting every Canadian to high-speed internet by 2030.

3. Starlink Direct-to-Cell Service Will Debut in Canada

Elon Musk said last August that Starlink would deploy mobile-phone internet service to Canada late in 2025. Powered by more than 250 satellites, the system will develop a fast network, free of dead zones, that will allow people to get online from anywhere, any time. The technology has proven its worth in emergencies: in October, the U.S. granted Starlink permission to provide service and emergency alerts to North Carolinians after Hurricane Helene incapacitated many of the state’s cell towers. The Starlink service will first roll out with T-Mobile in the U.S. and then with select partners worldwide. In Canada, that will be Rogers.

4. Waabi’s Driverless Trucks Will Hit the Road

A Toronto company is one of the leaders in the global race to master driverless vehicles. In 2025, Waabi, a three-year-old startup backed by Uber and AI powerhouse Nvidia, will launch its line of freight trucks in Texas. They have Level 4 Autonomy, which means they can handle complex driving situations without human intervention. The vehicles will be primarily trained in Waabi World, an AI-powered virtual simulator. Out in the real world, they’ll use built-in sensors to observe their surroundings and make driving decisions on the fly—like if ChatGPT travelled at 100 kilometres per hour.

5. The Okanagan Will Experience a Tech Boom

B.C.’s Okanagan region is better known for wineries than websites, but that will change this in 2025. Its tech sector, which includes 787 companies, has quintupled its economic impact over the past decade, generating $5 billion in revenue. Nearly half of the 32,000 tech workers in the region are under 35, concentrated in small cities like Kelowna and Penticton.

6. Ilya Sutskever Will Lead the AI Revolt

Ilya Sutskever (above), a founder of OpenAI, was instrumental in developing its signature product: ChatGPT. In 2024, the 38-year-old University of Toronto alum left the company to focus on creating safe AI, rather than the kind that could turn on its creators. Last June, he founded a new company called Safe Superintelligence, where he intends to develop super-powerful AI that’s free of bias, privacy breaches and rogue behaviour. Sutskever is well-suited for it. At OpenAI, he led the team tasked with ensuring AI stays aligned with human values, even if it surpasses human capabilities.

7. Hovercraft Will Fly Over Lake Ontario

Next winter, commuting between Toronto and Niagara will get a lot easier. The St. Lawrence Seaway Management Corporation and a company called Hoverlink Ontario are planning daily trips that would cut the two-hour drive between Toronto and St. Catharines to a 30-minute aquatic journey. Their vessels will be the first of their kind in North America: amphibious vehicles that float above the surface on inflated air cushions, driven by air propellers. The new fleet could shake things up on land, too, drawing Toronto commuters to St. Catharines’s cheaper housing market.

8. A $2-Billion Investment Will Kickstart Canada’s AI Industry

Last April, the federal government announced a $2-billion investment in Canada’s AI industry. But much of that money will flow south, since Canadians generally have to rely on American companies like Microsoft, Amazon and Google to access cloud-computing resources needed for AI. In the long term, however, the government plans to bolster Canada’s domestic AI-computing capacity. That includes supporting Canadian companies that manufacture GPUs, the chips needed to power AI applications. One example is Quebec’s Hypertec Cloud Inc., which plans to deploy 100,000 GPUs in 2025.

9. Quantum Computing Will Transform Everything

The world’s top scientific minds still don’t fully understand the mysteries of quantum mechanics. But the technology is barrelling forward anyway, spawning computers with processing speeds a million times faster than traditional ones. The implications are both exciting and frightening: quantum machines may produce generation-defining advances in medicine, energy and other fields, but they’ll also allow hackers to effortlessly break the cryptographic keys protecting passwords and personal information. In Waterloo, Ontario, four leading quantum mechanics companies were granted $17 million by the feds to advance their research in this arcane but beguiling new field. They include High Q Technologies, which uses quantum technology for drug discovery; and ISARA Corporation, a cybersecurity company developing cryptography that quantum computing won’t be able to crack. Another company, Xanadu, is focused on photonic quantum computing, using massless particles of light as the basis for its ultra-fast information processing.

10. Prompt Engineer Will Be the Job of the Future

Tools like ChatGPT are only as good as their user’s prompts. In 2025, writing those cues will go from being a fringe art form to a full-time job. Every kind of organization—software companies, pharmaceutical makers, law firms, hospitals and universities—is desperate to skillfully wield the capabilities of large language models. Companies like Porter, Johnson & Johnson and Dr. Pepper are already seeking AI interlocutors and ChatGPT whisperers. They’re just the early adopters; everyone else will soon follow.