🌐 AI & Tech Trends — Week of November 24, 2025
This week confirms a quiet flip: technology stops shouting through new interfaces and becomes infrastructure that simply works. Intelligence moves back to devices, agents operate as invisible vendors, icons fade behind contextual experiences, assistants battle for the last mile and AI-powered solo businesses become viable. Here are the five clearest signals.
1️⃣ Edge software renaissance: chips, models and data go back to the device
📌 Key points
- Global edge-computing spend will hit US$261B in 2025, driven by manufacturing, retail and telecom.
- Quantized 3‑8B parameter models solve cases that recently required cloud infrastructure.
- The differentiator is no longer “having AI” but executing it near the data with full control.
What’s happening
The key question shifted from “Which cloud?” to “How much lives near the sensor?”. Laptops with NPUs, industrial gateways with GPUs and cameras with AI-specific SoCs keep inference local, slash bandwidth needs and avoid runaway bills. Retailers, farms and hospitals now run lightweight models on site to stay responsive without pushing sensitive data to centralized stacks.
Numbers that matter
- Global edge computing spend will reach US$261 billion in 2025, doubling 2023 levels.
- By 2025, 75% of data processing will occur outside centralized data centers, merging models and sensors into one layer.
- Industrial edge projects report 18-35% savings in cloud costs and 40% latency reductions when inference moves local.
Simple example
A logistics fleet added micro-inference modules to 1,200 refrigerated trucks. Each unit detects anomalies, triggers ventilation and logs the event locally, syncing history only when coverage returns.
What it means for 2025
- Product roadmaps need “on-device” versions from day zero.
- Negotiating data control and latency guarantees becomes as important as price-per-token.
- Cybersecurity strategy must protect hundreds of intelligent nodes, not a single perimeter.
Source: Interempresas — Edge Computing, el nuevo pilar de la transformación digital
2️⃣ Invisible vendors: autonomous agents now operate full processes
📌 Key points
- Companies deploying agents report 25-45% operational savings and efficiency gains near 40%.
- Agents are wired into ERP, CRM and MES platforms just like internal service providers.
- “Invisible operations desks” execute procurement, support, QA and compliance without dashboards.
What’s happening
Agents outgrew the support inbox and now behave like internal vendors wired into ERP, CRM or MES. Each one handles a precise segment—classify, resolve, verify, document—and hands off to the next without ever showing a UI. Success depends less on larger models and more on controls, logging and spending limits that allow unattended execution.
Numbers that matter
- Organizations adopting AI agents cut operational costs between 25% and 45% while boosting efficiency up to 40%.
- Manufacturing firms connect agents to MES alerts, allowing them to open work orders and confirm closure without humans.
- Legal teams using agents for due diligence process 68% more documents with full traceability.
Simple example
In cybersecurity, four linked agents filter alerts, correlate evidence, open prioritized tickets and ping humans only for critical escalations. Analysts focus on judgement calls instead of triage.
What it means for 2025
- Processes must be designed as internal APIs, ready for agent execution.
- Audit logs and sandboxing are as important as model accuracy.
- Agent-as-a-service vendors will plug directly into corporate stacks under strict contracts.
Source: Zaapi — AI Agents in Business 2025: Statistics That Prove It’s No Longer Optional
3️⃣ Silent app decline: context replaces icons
📌 Key points
- New installs per user fell from 35 per year in 2020 to under 18 in 2025.
- Embedded assistants now handle payments, bookings and paperwork without GUI steps.
- Value shifts from “building another app” to exposing capabilities via intents and APIs.
What’s happening
Most users now keep only four or five active apps; everything else flows through assistants that parse natural language and trigger embedded capabilities. Brands that expose their services through intents inside messaging or super-apps stay top-of-mind, while “yet another app” gets deleted. Even browsers lean on smart shortcuts and contextual automations to avoid complex screens.
Numbers that matter
- Gartner expects mobile app usage to drop 25% by 2027 because AI assistants will take over recurring interactions.
- Messaging giants such as WhatsApp, Telegram and WeChat opened assistant APIs that deliver services without leaving the chat.
- Monthly retention for niche apps falls from 40% to 18% when they lack conversational or contextual integrations.
Simple example
A cooperative bank moved onboarding to messaging: the user texts “Increase my limit,” the assistant validates identity, simulates scenarios and answers inside the same thread. No downloads, no menus.
What it means for 2025
- Design capabilities, not screens—every service should expose a triggerable intent.
- Brand equity now lives in a consistent experience, not in the icon grid.
- Analytics must shift from taps and screens to conversational events.
Source: Gartner — Mobile App Usage Will Decrease 25% Due to AI Assistants by 2027
4️⃣ Assistant wars: whoever controls the last mile controls the business
📌 Key points
- Assistants are turning into “trust operating systems” for citizens and enterprises.
- Every platform—messaging, cloud, hardware—is investing to become the default entry point for transactions.
- Latin America has space for vertical assistants with proprietary data and local compliance baked in.
What’s happening
The new battleground is the assistant. Whoever mediates user intent controls discovery, purchases and monetization. Banks, governments and retailers now deploy assistants that blend inventory, logistics and payments in one conversation, while enterprises train internal copilots on their own data. The contest is about trust, integrations and compliance—not UI polish.
Numbers that matter
- Over 60% of online purchases in several Asian markets already flow through conversational assistants inside super-apps.
- Latin American telcos running transactional WhatsApp assistants cut call-center load by 35% while lifting cross-sell by 22%.
- Governments deploying official assistants reduced response times for critical procedures from five days to under 24 hours.
Simple example
An energy utility offers three capabilities via assistant: pay bills, report outages, schedule visits. Customers interact by chat or voice while the assistant coordinates billing, field teams and CRM behind the scenes.
What it means for 2025
- Decide whether to build your own assistant, embed into an existing one or do both.
- Data governance and trust will differentiate vertical assistants from generic alternatives.
- Expect specialized assistants for agriculture, logistics, retail and SMBs that understand regional context better than global players.
Source: Google Cloud — 2025 AI Trends Report
5️⃣ One-person economies: AI workflows let individuals run full companies
📌 Key points
- Individuals can now run marketing, support, sales and finance with automated flows.
- SMBs using AI report up to 30% revenue lifts and cost reductions while reclaiming 20+ hours per month.
- Marketplaces of agents and templates allow full businesses to launch in days.
What’s happening
“When do I hire?” turned into “What do I automate first?”. With specialized assistants, AI-native CRMs and no-code orchestrators, a single person can run marketing, support, finance and logistics. The work is outlining processes, connecting APIs and watching metrics rather than building headcount.
Numbers that matter
- SMBs adopting AI report revenue improvements and cost reductions of up to 30% while saving more than 20 hours each month.
- Accounting suites with AI cut month-end close time by 35% and reduce reconciliation errors by 28%.
- Solo operators using agent orchestration platforms serve 3.4× more clients per person while keeping NPS above 60.
Simple example
A boutique consultancy relies on five agents for lead gen, proposals, scheduling, delivery and collections. The founder attends key meetings while clients experience a full-service operation.
What it means for 2025
- Financial institutions must redesign products for businesses without payroll yet with high automated throughput.
- Regulators will need updated frameworks to recognize hyper-automated micro-enterprises.
- Competition will revolve around speed, not headcount: whoever automates first scales first.
Source: arXiv — AI-Driven Solo Entrepreneurship Economics (2025)
🧭 Conclusion — Invisible technology, measurable impact
All five signals point to the same outcome: less spectacle, more layers that simply work. The useful question is not “How much AI do we own?” but “What share of our operation already runs without friction?”. Identify which loads can move to the edge, which process an audited agent can own, which capability must be exposed without screens, which assistant should speak for the brand and how many hours you recover by treating the business as an automated stack. Technology may hide, but its impact has never been clearer.
📚 Recommended readings (EN)
-
Google — 2025 AI Trends Report
Great overview of enterprise AI, assistants, automation and edge intelligence.
👉 https://cloud.google.com/resources/ai-trends-report -
The Rise of AI Agents in Business (Zaapi)
Concrete statistics on adoption, cost savings and operational gains from autonomous agents.
👉 https://www.zaapi.com/blog/ai-agents-in-business-2025-statistics-that-prove-its-no-longer-optional -
MIT Technology Review — How AI is quietly reshaping work
Deep dive into how AI is transforming productivity, workflows and workforce structures.
👉 https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/11/21/1090602/ai-changing-workplace-productivity/
