Scoring 2025's Predictions

Every year I make a list of predictions & score the previous year’s. You can find my 10 Predictions for 2026 here. 2025 was a good year : I scored 7.85 out of 10.

1. The IPO market rips.

Score : 0.6.

46 software IPOs raised $12.3b in 2025, up from 21 IPOs raising $3.8b in 2024. The 2021 peak saw 126 tech IPOs raise over $150b. ¹ CoreWeave & Circle successfully debuted with significant market caps & strong post-IPO performance. ² However, others like Figma & Chime are trading below their last private valuations, reflecting a more discerning public market. We also didn’t see some of the high-flying IPOs like SpaceX, Stripe, & Databricks go out, although 2026 is a new year.

2. Google continues their surge in AI.

Score : 1.

Google has reclaimed its position at the apex of the AI landscape, ranking in the top tier of nearly every major category. Gemini 3 represents a fundamental leap in pre-training efficiency & multimodal integration, a thesis explored in The Scaling Wall Was A Mirage ³.

Gemini 3 Flash ⁴ has redefined the frontier for performance & latency, becoming the default engine for high-frequency agentic workflows.

In the open-source arena, the Gemma models ⁵ consistently hold the top spots for their weight classes, offering 70B-level reasoning in 27B packages. Even in creative media, Google’s video models ⁶ rank in the top three globally, prioritizing temporal consistency & character stability for enterprise use.

3. Voice becomes a dominant interface for people with AI as speech models are pushed on device & the accuracy/latency astounds.

Score : 1.

OpenAI reported that ChatGPT voice chat accounts for 19% of total user engagement as of October 2025. ⁷ Globally, there are now 8.4b voice assistants in use, with 153m users in the US alone. ⁸ 80% of businesses plan to integrate AI-driven voice into operations by 2026. ⁹ The prevalence of dictation with Whisper, WisprFlow, & conversations with agents like Gemini Live is now normal.

4. US VC investment remains roughly around $210-$230b, but VC fundraising increases by 20%

Score : 0.5.

US VC investment hit the mark, landing at approximately $220b for 2025, driven by massive AI rounds. ¹⁰ However, the fundraising prediction missed. While deal counts rose 11% in early 2025 ¹¹, actual US VC fundraising is on track for a ~20% decline, totaling roughly $65b for the year. ¹² A prolonged liquidity crunch & a slow exit environment kept LPs cautious, despite the enthusiasm for AI.

5. Consolidation is the theme for the Modern Data Stack.

Score : 1.

2025 was a record year for data infrastructure M&A, as the “Modern Data Stack” shifted from a collection of best-of-breed tools to a vertical race for integrated platforms.

The consolidation moved down the stack, proving that the race is now for power, compute, & integrated software. Most notably, CoreWeave’s acquisitions signal the rise of the “Full-Stack Hyperscaler,” owning everything from the GPU to the MLOps layer. ^{13 14 15}

6. The first $100m ARR company with 30 or fewer employees is created.

For comparison, Slack had 650 employees at $100m ARR. Ramp had 275. Wiz had 400.

Score : 1.

AI-native teams have achieved unprecedented efficiency. Cursor hit $100m ARR in January 2025 with just 12 employees ¹⁶, proving that agentic software can scale with minimal headcount. Midjourney continues to defy gravity, reaching $500m ARR with a team of roughly 100. ¹⁷ These teams leverage the capital efficiency of agentic software to meet ravenous consumer & enterprise demand. ¹⁸

7. After years of declines, the US web3 engineering population grows by 25% as the government embraces crypto & web3.

Score : 1.

US Web3 jobs grew by 26% in 2025, reaching 21,600 positions. ¹⁹ The regulatory environment shifted significantly, leading to a surge in institutional adoption & a new wave of consumer applications built on decentralized stacks.

8. Data center spending by hyperscalers eclipses $125b for the year as the AI race fuels demand for GPUs. Broadcom is the hottest semiconductor stock of the year.

Score : 0.75.

Hyperscaler CapEx far exceeded expectations, reaching an estimated $315b to $350b in 2025. Amazon alone spent $100b ²⁰, followed by Microsoft ($80b) ²¹ & Google ($75b) ²². Broadcom’s stock surged as it became the primary beneficiary of the AI networking buildout, outperforming even NVIDIA in the latter half of the year, but it was third in the domain next to Google & Micron. ^{23 24}

9. Stablecoin supply increases 50% to $300b as more businesses adopt this payment mechanism for B2B payments. Stablecoin volume is greater than 3x Visa’s transaction volume.

Score : 1.

Stablecoin supply hit $310b in December 2025. ²⁵ Monthly adjusted stablecoin volume has now surpassed Visa’s network volume, with annual on-chain volume exceeding $46t—nearly 3x Visa’s transaction volume. ²⁶ B2B adoption has accelerated as businesses seek faster, cheaper cross-border settlement.

10. Observability, SIEM, & Business Intelligence begin to use the same data lake. Usage-based pricing for many software companies creates a need for a single data lake. The data lake becomes the dominant data architecture across all workloads.

Score : 0.

While there is some convergence in the use of OpenTelemetry (OTel) for both security & observability ²⁷, the broader vision of a single data lake for BI, SIEM, & observability has not materialized. Enterprises continue to maintain siloed architectures for performance & compliance reasons, & the cost savings from hybrid lakehouse models haven’t been enough to force a total consolidation. ^{28 29}