As the Forrester research team conducted its analysis for the top 10 emerging technologies this year, it became clear that some of the dynamics in Europe are different, both for current and planned investment in emerging technologies.
Contrary to continued popular misconception, this isn’t a story about European firms lagging behind in technology adoption or a lack of innovative startups. For example, when we look back at AI adoption rates across Europe in 2020, the European rates weren’t that different from what we were seeing elsewhere; most of the software, however, was procured from non-European companies, mostly US-based providers. As for Europe’s emerging tech startups, the best tended to be snapped up by US firms (e.g., DeepMind, acquired by Google) or chose to move their headquarters to the US in order to grow (e.g., Spotify).
While all of this is still the case today, recent geopolitical developments have resulted in a concerted drive toward reducing that dependency. EU initiatives include the AI continent action plan, the aim of which is for the EU to become “a global leader in artificial intelligence” and a leading AI continent. Less than a month after the AI plan launch, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in early May announced the no less ambitious Choose Europe for Science drive, which seeks to attract international research talent to the EU with grants and reduced bureaucracy. The UK, ranked fifth in the 2024 Government AI Readiness Index and first in Western Europe, has laid out its own AI Opportunities Action Plan, even though it’s not clear yet how much government funding will be available.
So with all of this in mind, let’s look at a few of the emerging technologies from our top 10 list through a European lens:
Generative AI for language is leveling the playing field for other languages. Today, only one of the most widely used large language models comes from Europe (Mistral). But it’s not for want of talent, as already mentioned; for example, the core of Meta’s Llama model was also developed in France. So it shouldn’t be too much of a stretch to fulfil the promise of developing models that support European cultural and linguistic diversity. The cumbersomely named Alliance for Language Technologies European Digital Infrastructure Consortium formed in 2024, together with the more recently established Language Data Space, supports the collection of multilingual data and making it available via a marketplace for language data.
All the AI technologies in our top 10 can benefit from investment in compute infrastructure. Back in 2021, the EU introduced a regulation to establish the European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking with the objective of building a new generation of supercomputers within Europe and to widen access to existing and future supercomputing capacity and services. In 2025, a number of AI factories became available as part of this initiative; they offer compute power and support services free of charge to small and medium enterprises as well as startups.
Autonomous mobility technologies are more widely used than is obvious. You won’t see any driverless robotaxis on European roads today, and there aren’t as many factory robots deployed as in some of the APAC countries. That said, Germany is in fourth place when it comes to robot density in the manufacturing industry (behind South Korea, Singapore, and China). Autonomous trams and underground trains operate in many European countries, and a variety of transportation vehicles move autonomously in closed environments such as factories and ports. Rollouts of services like autonomous shopping deliveries exist, as well, albeit at a small scale. Also worth mentioning are the advances made in the hardware and software of autonomous drones driven by the needs of the war in Ukraine. Cost pressures, demographic shifts, and the desire to reduce dependency on imports will continue to drive investment in all of the technologies under the autonomous mobility umbrella.
I’ve touched on some, but not all, of our top 10 emerging technologies for 2025 in this post. If you want to get a deeper understanding of these technologies, check out our upcoming webinar on May 21, where Brian Hopkins, Forrester vice president of the emerging tech portfolio, will walk through the 10 technologies, explain our benefit horizons segmentation, and share more use cases.
