Bets on what comes next
Bets on what comes next. With timelines.
Each prediction has a target year, a confidence rating, and verifiable first signals you can check today. Every prediction is paired with an obituary in Tech Graveyard: what dies makes room for what wins.
Featured prediction
The strongest bet on this list. Read it first; the rest are smaller corollaries.
All predictions
30 of 30 matching the current filters.
Category
Confidence
// By 2030
medium confidencePasswordless Everything by 2030
When I founded a CIAM platform in 2013, we built password reset infrastructure handling hundreds of millions of requests yearly. By 2030 that infrastructure is a museum exhibit.
First signals: Apple/Google/Microsoft all default to passkeys. Amazon and Best Buy launched passkey-only signup in 2024. FIDO Alliance certified 1B+ deployments.
authentication · Disruption 9/10
// By 2027
high confidencePhishing-Resistant Auth Becomes the Default by 2027
CISA mandated phishing-resistant auth for federal agencies in 2022. Enterprise follows federal within 24 months. Consumer follows enterprise within 24 more.
First signals: CISA mandate for federal agencies (2022). Apple/Google/Microsoft default passkey support. SMS MFA actively deprecated in NIST guidance.
authentication · Disruption 7/10
// By 2028
high confidenceMachine Identities Outnumber Humans 100 to 1 by 2028
Enterprises are managing machine identities with tools designed for humans. Agent Identity Governance is a category that does not exist yet. It will be a $5B market by 2028.
First signals: Current enterprise ratio at 45:1 (CyberArk 2024). Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google all shipping agent platforms. MCP specification adoption growing.
authentication · Disruption 10/10
// By 2027
medium confidenceBehavioral Biometrics Replace CAPTCHAs Everywhere
By 2027, the visible CAPTCHA is gone from the top 10,000 sites. Invisible behavioral signals running continuously replace it. Bot defense becomes invisible.
First signals: Cloudflare Turnstile on 2M+ sites. Apple Private Access Tokens in Safari. reCAPTCHA market share declining.
security · Disruption 6/10
// By 2029
high confidenceCloud IAM Becomes the Only IAM
By 2029, identity directories run in the cloud or they do not run. The last Fortune 500 on-prem AD deployment retires. The hybrid era ends.
First signals: Microsoft pushing Entra ID for new deployments. AD greenfield deployments at all-time low. Okta enterprise wins accelerating.
infrastructure · Disruption 7/10
// By 2028
high confidenceMost Production Code Will Be Written in English
I am building production systems with Claude Code writing most of the code. This is not a future prediction. It is the current state, scaling fast.
First signals: Cursor at $100M+ ARR within 18 months. GitHub Copilot at 70%+ enterprise developer adoption. Claude Code shipping autonomous PRs.
workflow · Disruption 9/10
// By 2027
medium confidenceThe Autonomous SOC Becomes Mainstream
The autonomous SOC is not replacing your security team. It is replacing the Tier-1 alert queue that nobody wanted to staff anyway.
First signals: Prophet Security and Dropzone AI in Fortune 500 production. CrowdStrike Charlotte AI shipping. SOC budget reallocation accelerating.
security · Disruption 8/10
// By 2028
high confidenceZero Trust Becomes the Default Network Architecture
Zero Trust stops being a buzzword and becomes the boring default. New deployments skip VPNs entirely. The 1996 perimeter model finally retires.
First signals: Cloudflare Access at 100M+ users. Tailscale at meaningful enterprise penetration. CISA federal Zero Trust mandate by 2027.
infrastructure · Disruption 7/10
// By 2027
high confidenceServer-Side Attribution Becomes the Only Attribution
The death of third-party cookies forces a complete rebuild of digital marketing attribution. Server-side wins. Most advertisers are not ready.
First signals: Meta CAPI at 70% advertiser adoption. Google Enhanced Conversions mainstream. CDP market growing 20%+ annually.
workflow · Disruption 6/10
// By 2027
high confidenceEvery Security Practitioner Has an AI Copilot by 2027
By 2027, security practitioners without AI copilots are the exception. The shift happens faster than SIEMs spread, faster than EDR, faster than SOAR. The economics force it.
First signals: Microsoft Security Copilot GA. CrowdStrike Charlotte AI in production. SentinelOne Purple AI shipping. Every major SIEM vendor announced AI features.
security · Disruption 8/10
// By 2032
medium confidenceKids Born After 2020 Will Not Need a Driver's License
Waymo runs 200,000+ weekly trips with no driver. Tesla, Zoox, and Chinese players scale fast. By 2032 the question is not whether kids learn to drive, but where they would need to.
First signals: Waymo at 200,000+ weekly rides across 5+ cities. Tesla FSD v13 shipping. Wayve raised $1B. Mercedes Drive Pilot Level 3 in production.
consumer · Disruption 10/10
// By 2029
medium confidencePersonal Data Vaults Become the Default Identity Model
The 25-year era of giving every app a copy of your data is ending. Personal data vaults give you back the keys. Selective disclosure replaces blanket sharing.
First signals: EU Digital Identity Wallet regulation enforced from 2026. Solid protocol production deployments. iOS App Intents normalizing app-to-app data borrowing.
authentication · Disruption 8/10
// By 2029
medium confidencePersonal AI Clones Take Your Calls and Meetings
An AI agent trained on my emails, my Slack history, and my voice can already attend a meeting and brief me after. By 2029 every knowledge worker will have one.
First signals: Voice cloning at ElevenLabs and Cartesia indistinguishable from real. Meeting recap agents (Otter, Fathom) handling half of meetings. Claude and GPT-4o multimodal agents.
workflow · Disruption 9/10
// By 2028
high confidenceAgentic Browsing Replaces Most Manual Web Use
Claude for Chrome ships. OpenAI Operator ships. Browser-as-runtime for AI agents is here. The web stops being browsed by humans for most multi-step tasks.
First signals: Claude for Chrome shipped 2025. OpenAI Operator in production. Browserbase at $40M+ ARR. Perplexity Comet browser shipping.
interface · Disruption 9/10
// By 2031
medium confidenceRobotaxis Become Default Urban Transport
The question is not whether your kids will drive. It is whether they will need to own a car at all. By 2031 most urban trips in major US and Chinese cities will be robotaxi-summoned.
First signals: Waymo 200K+ weekly rides. Baidu Apollo Go expanding to 10+ Chinese cities. Tesla robotaxi service plans 2026. Lyft and Uber inking robotaxi-fleet deals.
consumer · Disruption 10/10
// By 2030
medium confidenceAR Glasses Begin to Replace Smartphones
The smartphone is not dying immediately. But by 2030, the first generation that grew up with AR glasses will start treating phones the way phones treated PDAs.
First signals: Meta Orion prototype shown 2024. Apple Vision Pro generation 2 expected 2026. Google Android XR with Samsung shipping 2025. Snap Spectacles AR developer kit.
interface · Disruption 10/10
// By 2028
high confidenceLive Translation Earbuds Make Language Barriers Optional
I had a 20-minute conversation with a shop owner in Tokyo last year. Neither of us speaks the other's language. The AirPods did the translation in near real-time. The future is already here.
First signals: Apple Live Translation in iOS 18 (AirPods). Pixel Buds Live Translate. Timekettle dedicated translator earbuds at scale. Sub-300ms latency now achievable.
interface · Disruption 7/10
// By 2030
high confidenceAI Becomes First-Line Medical Diagnosis
AI already outperforms most radiologists on specific tasks. By 2030, AI is the first reader, not the second. The clinical workflow rebuilds around it.
First signals: FDA approved 950+ AI medical devices by 2024. Aidoc, Viz.ai in production at major hospital systems. Google Med-PaLM 2 outperforming USMLE.
workflow · Disruption 9/10
// By 2028
medium confidenceSynthetic Data Becomes the Primary AI Training Data
The internet ran out of high-quality text for AI training. Synthetic data is filling the gap. By 2028, more AI training tokens come from AI than from humans.
First signals: Anthropic publishes papers on synthetic data scaling. Microsoft Phi models trained on synthetic data. Sakana AI synthetic training. Scale AI pivoting toward synthetic.
infrastructure · Disruption 8/10
// By 2029
high confidenceMobile Driver's License Replaces Plastic Cards
Your driver's license becomes a verifiable credential in your phone wallet. By 2029, this is the default in most US states and the EU. The plastic card persists as backup.
First signals: 13+ US states issue mDL. TSA accepts mDL at 80+ airports. ISO 18013-5 standard production. EU Digital Identity Wallet mandate by 2026.
authentication · Disruption 8/10
// By 2028
high confidenceSmart Homes That Actually Work via Matter
Smart home has been broken for 15 years because of standards wars. Matter ended the war. Apple, Google, Amazon, Samsung all back the same standard. The category finally works.
First signals: Matter 1.0 launched 2022. Matter 1.4 launched 2024 with energy management. Major retailers tag products as Matter-compatible.
consumer · Disruption 6/10
// By 2029
high confidenceEdge AI Compute Becomes the Default for Latency-Critical Workloads
Apple Intelligence runs on-device. NPUs ship in every laptop. By 2029, most consumer AI inference is at the edge, not in the cloud. The economics force it.
First signals: Apple Intelligence ships on-device. Snapdragon X NPUs in Windows laptops. Groq and Cerebras pushing inference at speeds cloud cannot match. Cloudflare Workers AI scaling.
infrastructure · Disruption 8/10
// By 2028
medium confidencePersonal AI Agents Transact on Your Behalf
When my AI agent books my flight, who is signing the contract? Me or the agent? The infrastructure for agent commerce gets built between now and 2028.
First signals: Stripe Agents API launched 2024. Shopify agent commerce primitives. Visa Intelligent Commerce. Cardholder-as-agent payment delegation.
workflow · Disruption 9/10
// By 2029
medium confidenceContinuous Health Monitoring Becomes the Default Wellness Layer
Dexcom Stelo lets non-diabetics wear a glucose monitor. Whoop, Oura, Apple Watch track sleep and HRV. By 2029 most adults have continuous biomarker data.
First signals: Dexcom Stelo FDA cleared for non-diabetics 2024. Abbott Lingo OTC 2024. Oura at 2.5M+ subscribers. Apple Watch FDA-cleared features expanding.
consumer · Disruption 8/10
// By 2030
medium confidenceAmbient Computing Replaces Screen-Centric Interaction
I asked the kitchen 'what is the weather in Boston tomorrow' and a voice answered. I did not pick up a phone. By 2030 this is how most quick interactions happen.
First signals: Alexa+ launched 2025 with LLM backbone. Apple Intelligence ambient features. Google Home with Gemini. Echo Show ubiquity.
interface · Disruption 7/10
// By 2029
medium confidenceDrone and Robot Delivery Becomes Routine for Last-Mile
Wing has done 500,000+ commercial drone deliveries. Zipline delivers medical supplies in 9 countries. Starship robots do 6M+ deliveries. The last mile is being rebuilt around robots.
First signals: Wing 500K+ deliveries. Zipline operating in 9 countries. Starship 6M+ deliveries on campus and urban. Amazon Prime Air finally scaling 2024 to 2025.
consumer · Disruption 7/10
// By 2029
medium confidenceBiometric Payments Replace Cards and Phones
I paid for groceries by tapping my palm in 2024. Amazon One is in 500+ Whole Foods. China runs biometric payment at population scale. By 2029 your hand is your wallet.
First signals: Amazon One in 500+ Whole Foods. Mastercard Biometric Service rolling out 2024. China face-pay at population scale. Apple Pay Face ID on iPhone.
consumer · Disruption 7/10
// By 2030
high confidencePost-Quantum Cryptography Hits Consumer Devices by 2030
NIST finalized post-quantum standards in 2024. By 2030 every consumer cryptographic operation is post-quantum. The most consequential cryptography migration in computing history is silently underway.
First signals: NIST finalized PQC standards August 2024. Apple iMessage PQ3 launched February 2024. Signal PQXDH shipping. Chrome shipping ML-KEM hybrid TLS.
security · Disruption 7/10
// By 2029
medium confidenceStablecoins Replace Wire Transfers for Cross-Border Payments
Stablecoin transaction volume passed $10 trillion annually in 2024. Wire transfers cost $40 to $100 and take days. Stablecoins cost cents and settle in seconds.
First signals: Stablecoin volume $10T+ annually in 2024. Stripe acquired Bridge for $1.1B. PayPal PYUSD scaling. Visa settling on USDC.
infrastructure · Disruption 8/10
// By 2030
high confidenceMajor Economies Go Effectively Cashless
Sweden is functionally cashless. China and India run population-scale digital payment rails. The US lags but follows. By 2030 cash is a niche, not a default.
First signals: Sweden 4% cash. China 90%+ digital. India UPI 13B+ monthly transactions. US contactless adoption 50%+. ECB digital euro pilot.
consumer · Disruption 8/10
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