ARK Invest's 2025 Big Ideas Report: Technological Convergence Driving Exponential Growth and Reshaping the World by 2030

ARK Invest's 2025 Big Ideas Report: Technological Convergence Driving Exponential Growth and Reshaping the World by 2030Compared to the 2024 report, the 2025 edition emphasizes the synergistic effects between technologies. Five key technological platformsAI, robotics, energy storage, public blockchains, and multi-omics sequencingare converging at an unprecedented rate

ARK Invest's 2025 Big Ideas Report: Technological Convergence Driving Exponential Growth and Reshaping the World by 2030

ARK Invest recently released its 2025 Big Ideas report, a comprehensive analysis spanning tens of thousands of words. The report delves into the future trends of cutting-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain, and robotics, predicting their convergence will profoundly transform human society. Using the classic legend of doubling grains of wheat on a chessboard as an analogy, the report illustrates the exponential nature of current technological advancement. While seemingly simple initially, the number of grains explodes exponentially in the latter half of the board. The report argues that technology development, particularly in AI, is at a similar stage, having completed the first 40 squares of the "chessboard" with computing power advancements. The latter half promises even more dramatic progress. ARK projects that AI computing power will increase over 1000-fold by 2030, reshaping numerous industries, including healthcare and financial services.

Compared to the 2024 report, the 2025 edition emphasizes the synergistic effects between technologies. Five key technological platformsAI, robotics, energy storage, public blockchains, and multi-omics sequencingare converging at an unprecedented rate. For example, AI advancements accelerate new drug development and autonomous driving breakthroughs; blockchain provides new incentive mechanisms for AI training; and the explosion of multi-omics data offers massive training material for AI models. The power of this convergence is already evident. ARK predicts that global real economic growth could accelerate from its average of 3% over the past 125 years to over 7% by 2030, driven by robotics revitalizing manufacturing, autonomous robotaxis revolutionizing transportation, and AI boosting the productivity of knowledge workers. However, this growth won't be evenly distributed; companies leveraging technological convergence will reap outsized rewards, while those clinging to legacy models risk obsolescence. ARK forecasts that the market capitalization share of innovative companies will rise from the current 16% to over 60% by 2030, signifying an unprecedented wealth redistribution.

AI Agents: A New Era of Intelligent Computing

The 2025 report focuses its AI analysis on AI agents, which are rapidly permeating various sectors, becoming the core driver of technological transformation. Compared to 2024, AI agents have achieved revolutionary breakthroughs in cognitive abilities, task execution, and self-learning capabilities, understanding complex instructions and autonomously planning and executing tasks. The report notes that AI agents are redefining consumer interactions and business workflows, with their development and commercialization exceeding expectations. Data shows that AI companies like OpenAI are experiencing revenue growth surpassing that of the social media boom. OpenAI projects over $10 billion in revenue for 2025, outpacing the early commercialization of platforms like Facebook and Instagram.

The rapid development of AI agents is also fueling a surge in hardware demand. The report predicts that from 2025 onwards, the majority of hardware sales will be AI-enabled devices, leading to rapid mass adoption, potentially faster than previous technologies like personal computers and smartphones.

In the advertising market, the influence of AI agents is rapidly growing. ARK estimates that AI-mediated advertising revenue will account for over 54% of the digital advertising market by 2030, dominating a market valued at $1.1 trillion. This shift stems from changing search patterns: as consumers increasingly rely on personal AI agents for information retrieval and purchasing decisions, advertising methods will adapt accordingly.

In e-commerce, AI agents show immense potential. Research suggests that AI-assisted shopping could account for nearly 25% of global online sales by 2030, reaching approximately $9 trillion in transactions. AI agents will significantly alter consumer shopping experiences by streamlining product discovery, personalizing recommendations, and simplifying the purchase process. Digital wallets play a crucial role in this trend. The report forecasts that AI-powered purchasing agents will support 72% of e-commerce transactions by 2030. Current market valuations of leading digital wallet platforms (like Block, Robinhood, and SoFi) reach $1800 per user, and this could increase by another $50-$200 with the rise of AI purchasing agents.

In enterprise services, AI agents are significantly boosting productivity. By deploying AI agents, businesses can increase operational volume while maintaining the same workforce size or redirect human resources to higher-value tasks. Customer service is a prime example; even with a fixed cost of $1 per interaction, an AI agent handling 35% of customer service inquiries can generate substantial cost savings. Research shows AI will also reduce onboarding costs and per-seat software costs, while being more scalable than human labor.

In software development, the coding capabilities of AI agents are rapidly improving, accelerating software development lifecycles and reducing software creation costs. This shift will influence companies' "build vs. buy" decisions, potentially disrupting the market positions of traditional software companies. Global software spending is projected to accelerate from a 14% annual growth rate over the past decade to 18%-48% by 2030.

Furthermore, ARK's research indicates a significant transformation in AI-driven knowledge work. Depending on adoption scenarios, it's estimated that 31%-81% of current work hours could be automated by 2030, potentially creating a productivity surplus of $22 trillion to $117 trillion. At a 10% value capture rate, this would generate $2.2 trillion to $11.7 trillion in new revenue for the software market.

Digital Asset Markets Mature

2024 proved a pivotal year for Bitcoin. After weathering several significant events, Bitcoin demonstrated unprecedented market resilience. The US approval of spot Bitcoin ETFs in early 2024 marked a milestone. These ETFs attracted over $4 billion in inflows on their first trading day, a record high for ETF launches, far exceeding the $1.2 billion inflow for gold ETFs in November 2004. By the end of 2024, Bitcoin ETF assets under management had grown significantly, signaling increasing institutional acceptance.

Bitcoin's fundamentals also continued to strengthen. In 2024, Bitcoin underwent its fourth halving, reducing its inflation rate from approximately 1.8% to 0.9%, falling below gold's long-term supply growth rate for the first time. This mechanism highlights Bitcoin's scarcity as an asset. Remarkably, despite a 50% reduction in miner revenue due to the halving, Bitcoin's hashrate (a key indicator of network security) reached an all-time high, demonstrating strong miner confidence in Bitcoin's long-term prospects.

In terms of market performance, Bitcoin showed significant resilience in 2024. The German government's sale of 50,000 seized Bitcoins was easily absorbed by the market, followed by a price increase from $53,000 to $68,000. Simultaneously, the long-pending Mt. Gox bankruptcy case concluded with the repayment of over 109,000 Bitcoins to creditors, eliminating a major overhang of sell pressure. The smooth resolution of these events demonstrated the depth and resilience of the Bitcoin market.

Institutional adoption also made significant progress. By the end of 2024, 74 publicly listed companies held Bitcoin on their balance sheets, with the total value increasing from $11 billion in 2023 to $55 billion. Notably, Bitcoin's realized market capitalization (average purchase cost) increased by 86% to $811.7 billion, with an average acquisition cost of $40,980 per Bitcoinan all-time high.

Stablecoins, one of the fastest-growing segments of the digital asset space, surpassed Mastercard and Visa in transaction value in 2024. Annualized transaction volume reached $15.6 trillion, representing 119% and 200% of Visa and Mastercard transaction volumes, respectively. Monthly transactions reached 110 million, although only 0.41% and 0.72% of the traditional payment giants, the average transaction value was significantly higher.

In terms of market share, USDT (Tether) and USDC (Circle) continued to dominate the stablecoin market, accounting for 90% of the total supply. Notably, stablecoins have penetrated almost all major Layer-1 blockchains. As of 2024, the stablecoin supply reached $203 billion, approximately 0.97% of the US M2 money supply. Active addresses hit a record high of 23 million in December, with the Tron network proving most popular in emerging markets due to its low transaction fees.

Innovation continues to emerge. EthenaLabs, by tokenizing popular basis trading, accumulated a total value locked (TVL) of $6 billion within 12 months. By tokenizing delta-neutral positions, the project is able to offer 20%-30% returns depending on market conditions. Already holding 10% of Ethereum options open interest, EthenaLabs is... (the text cuts off here)