Lets face it: The fact that AI is amazing is no longer all that … amazing. The technology is under ever-increasing pressure to prove its real-world value for consumers, businesses, and researchers in specific contexts. These honorees in the applied AI category are proving AIs worth for fashion advice, pharmaceutical advice, coding, and much more.
Alta For bringing AI to personal stylingFor people who lack style expertise or time for outfit planning, the task of choosing what to wear can be a daily frustration. Alta built a personal AI stylist app that generates outfits based on users’ actual wardrobes, lifestyle, budget, weather, and upcoming eventswhether theyre dressing for a board meeting in Switzerland or a summer wedding in Napa. Users can upload their wardrobe or let the app automatically scrape their fashion buys from receipts and photos, then receive personalized suggestions they can visualize on customized avatars. The style agent learns each user’s unique style preferences, getting smarter with use. Alta raised $11 million from top-tier investors including Menlo Ventures, secured a partnership with the Council of Fashion Designers of America that gives CFDA members access to its AI platform, and partnered with tidiness guru Marie Kondo to offer premium closet organization services.
Ambience Healthcare For freeing doctors from documentation drudgeryCaregivers spend countless hours every week filling out patient chartstime that could be spent on actual patient care. Ambience Healthcare has developed an AI platform that listens in on patientphysician conversations in the exam room via a phone app and automatically generates comprehensive medical notes. The AI then creates a draft summary of the notescomplete with suggested ICD-10 and CPT codesthat the caregiver can review, edit, and sign. The system integrates with major electronic health record systems such as Epic and Oracle Cerner. Cleveland Clinic is now implementing Ambients solution after doing a comprehensive head-to-head test of AI scribe solutions for healthcare, testing five leading solutions with hundreds of clinicians and across more than 80 medical specialties over six months.
Bolt For bringing vibe coding to the browserBuilding web and mobile applications traditionally requires multiple development teams, technical infrastructure, and months of coding. Among the highest-profile entrants in the new category of vibe coding tools, Bolt changes app creation by letting users describe what they want to build in natural language then instantly generating code. The platform handles front-end and back-end development logistics as well as hosting without complex setups or cloud services. After launching with a single tweet in October 2024, Bolts business grew quickly, scaling from zero to $40 million annualized recurring revenue in just four months. The company secured $83.5 million in Series B funding at a $700 million valuation.
Cradle For accelerating protein engineering with AITraditional protein engineering is slow, expensive, and unpredictable, hindering progress in pharmaceuticals, materials science, and biotechnology. Cradle harnesses generative AI to accelerate protein design by creating entirely new protein sequences tailored for specific functions. This distinguishes Cradle from DeepMinds AlphaFold, which predicts the structures of proteins. The platform reduces experimental iterations, improves success rates, and uncovers novel structures that were previously out of reach for developing therapeutics, sustainable materials, and industrial enzymes. In 2025, Cradle expanded to 21 customers, including Johnson & Johnson and Novo Nordisk, demonstrating real-world validation of its technology in high-stakes drug development.
GitHubFor making AI coding collaborativeIn the age of AI coding assistants, developers are under pressure to ship code faster while maintaining quality, often forcing a choice between speed and control. Since becoming the first widely used coding assistant, GitHub Copilot has evolved beyond simple code suggestions into a tool for creating entire new software features and functions. But GitHub and its parent company, Microsoft, have taken a distinct approach to developing Copilot: Rather than pursuing full automation, GitHub designed Copilot to leave the human coder firmly in control. The assistant works like a good human teammate, GitHub says, showing its work and asking for review before anything ships. GitHub says Copilot’s user base quadrupled year over year in 2025 and now includes 15 million developers and more than 77,000 organizations.
Google For applying secure open models to healthcareHealthcare AI developers often struggle to build medical applications because they cant access specialized models that handle sensitive data securely. Google’s MedGemma family offers the first open multi-modal models trained specifically for medical text and image comprehension, enabling developers to keep sensitive data within private environments while adapting models for specific use cases. The models range from 4 billion to 27 billion parameters, small enough to fine-tune and serve on a single GPU, with the 27B version featuring clinical reasoning capabilities useful for patient triage and differential diagnosis. MedGemma achieved over 150,000 downloads from more than 10,000 developers in its first month, with the community creating and sharing more than 100 fine-tuned versions on Hugging Face.
Hebbia For extracting insights from financial document chaosWhile making critical risk assessments and investment decisions, financial services professionals often must rely on unstructured data contained within numerous documents. Hebbia custom-built a generative AI solution for finance that lets users more quickly capture insights from millions of diverse documents located all around the organization. An investment banker might use Hebbia to generate conclusions from a call transcript, or someone in private equity could use it to identify potential risk factors before signing an investment deal. Hebbia can also summarize external documents such as market reports and credit agreements. The platform’s versatility across multiple financial tasks helped Hebbia secure a $130 million funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz. Hebbia says it now serves 30% of all U.S. asset managers and has processed over 100 million documents, or 10 times more than its nearest competitors.
Jigsaw For making sense of massive public conversationsGovernments and other organizations struggle to synthesize thousands of public comments on civic issues. Traditional analysis methods can take months to deliver results, leaving feedback loops open too long for meaningful action. Jigsaw, an incubator inside Google, used Googles Gemini AI model to create a toolkit called Sensemaker. It identifies key topics and themes from large-scale online conversations, allowing users to understand thousands of perspectives within minutes while preserving discussion richness. The technology surfaces patterns, areas of agreement and disagreement, and actionable insights from data that was previously impossible to process at scale. In its pilot with Bowling Green, Kentucky’s BG2050 intiativea project addressing the expected doubling of the citys population by 2050local leaders used Sensemaker to analyze a four-week online conversation, enabling them to draw insights from community input that would have otherwise remained buried in unstructured data.
Pando For taming logistics chaos Global logistics has faced relentless disruption in recent years, from the RussiaUkraine war to sourcing upheavals caused by the Trump administrations tariffs. Pando recently added an AI agent called Pi to its platform for managing complexity and risk. The agent is powered by proprietary logistics language models and can automate operations such as requesting shipment from a carrier, invoice validation, and anomaly detection. The agent recommends actions, explains its logic, and executes tasks after confirmation. Within weeks of Pis launch, a number of Fortune 50 brands, including Meta, onboarded Pando, demonstrating the platform’s ability to handle the complexities of enterprise-scale logistics.
Samsung Electronics AmericaFor making AI feel natural on mobile devicesSmartphone AI features can sometimes feel gimmicky or disconnected from real-life workflows, creating barriers and distractions rather than enhancing the user experience. The features not only have to be useful but they have to show up at the right times and right places in the UX. Samsung did it right with Galaxy AI, which it integrated directly into its smartphones Android operating system to provide context-aware, personalized experiences through multimodal AI agents that can interpret text, speech, images, and videos. Users can perform multistep actions across apps, using plain language to get directions, send messages, and update calendars simultaneously. The Galaxy S25 series implementation has earned widespread praise from tech reviewersToms Guide remarked, The S25 Ultra is packed with smarter AI features I wish the iPhone 16 Pro Max had.
Sonar For ensuring AI-generated code meets enterprise standardsAI coding assistants have proved that they can accelerate software development, but as the tools have evolved to touch more and more parts of an organizations code, they also can introduce hard-to-detect flaws that show up as bugs later on. Sonars platform uses AI to scan software for quality problems then fixes them. Fixes are informed by the platforms deep experienceit analyzes more than 300 billion lines of code every day, the company says. The platform’s AI Code Assurance mode provides stricter quality gates for AI-generated code, while AI CodeFix generates contextual repair suggestions based on precise analysis findings rather than generic recommendations. Sonar says that 70% of developers rate its fix quality at 4 or 5 out of 5.
Typeface For generating end-to-end marketing campaignsMarketers too often must choose between AI-generated content that’s generic or that is off-brand. Typeface created the first AI marketing platform that orchestrates the entire content process from brief to finished campaign. While the Typeface integrates with more than 30 AI models, the company trains custom models that maintain brand voice, tone, and visual identity. The platform’s Brand Hub is a searchable AI content repository that enforces compliance and governance guidelines. Spaces provides a visual workspace where marketers create personalized emails, ads, web pages, and videos without becoming prompt engineers. Typeface secured major enterprise deals with Fortune 100 companies, including Asics, in 2025.
VermillioFor arming creators against deepfakesVermillio makes a new kind of IP protection platform that identifies the unauthorized use of a persons likeness or voice in synthetic or AI-generated audio and video. Traditional content protection systems can fail to detect AI-generated content derived from a face or voice because theyre better at detecting exact replicas of the original content. Vermillio’s TraceID technology assigns digital signatures to every fragment of intellectual property, creating “soft bindings” through digital hashes and fingerprints that arent easily removed by generative AI models. Vermillios platform tracks IP usage across images, text, audio, and video, ensuring proper attribution and compensation while detecting harmful deepfakes. Vermillio says it had more than 130,000 pieces of unauthorized AI-generated content taken down in Q4 2024 alone. In March 2025 the company closed a $16 million Series A round led by Sony Music Entertainment and including Disney and Warner Music Group.
Warp For reimagining the terminal for the AI ageDevelopers have long preferred to control their machines via a command-line terminal because its more direct and precise. Unfortunately, the terminal, which was born in the 1970s, hasnt kept up with new developments in AI-powered coding assistants and agents. So Warp built a modern, AIpowered terminal for developers called an Agentic Development Environment (ADE). The environment maintains the command line’s power while adding support for natural-language-based AI coding assistance and the ability to manage multiple AI agents. The result is a platform where AI agents have more visibility into the code base so that they can detect potential problems and offer ways of fixing them. Warp says it has seen 90% year-over-year growth in its user base, with 600,000 active developers now using the platform, including 16,000 engineering teams.
The companies and individuals behind these technologies are among the honorees in Fast Companys Next Big Things in Tech awards for 2025. Read more about the winners across all categories and the methodology behind the selection process.
These companies arent bigbut theyre bringing new ideas to some thorny challenges. Kids have been crafting with cardboard for decades, but Chompshop has found a way to make it safer and more fun. Online clothes shopping has long been a bit hit or miss, but Veesuals found a way to maximize the number of hits. And GoodMaps and Overture Maps have tackled longstanding navigation problems.
ChompshopFor making kids cardboard crafts safer and more funCheap, abundant cardboard is great for kids art and science projects, but its often hard to trim with scissors. Chompshop has developed a kid-safe power tool specifically designed for this versatile material. While its called a ChompSaw and looks like a table saw, its based on a protected hole-punch mechanism that keeps childrens hands safe. After a successful Kickstarter campaign and Shark Tank appearance, the company has sold more than 17,000 ChompSaws since its October 2024 launch.
GoodMapsFor helping people navigate indoors as easily as on the roadNavigating indoor spaces like airports and museums can be complicated, especially as GPS-style assistance is typically not available. GoodMaps developed an AI-powered system letting venue operators scan and map facilities using just an iPhone. A GoodMaps Studio application lets operators customize maps and guidance. The platform has been embraced by airports from London Heathrow to Dallas Fort Worth International, as well as institutions such as Ohio’s Armstrong Air & Space Museum.
Overture MapsFor setting the standard for unifying messy map dataA collaborative open-data initiative founded by Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, and TomTom and embraced by other big names such as Esri, Tripadvisor, and Uber, Overture Maps built an identification system for more than 3 billion global locations thats as unique as the human fingerprint. Its Global Entity Reference System makes it clear that Toms Diner is (or isnt) the same location as Toms Restaurant, whichever app or dataset youre working with. GERS can also benefit governments tracking data like car accidents and serve autonomous cars needing clear navigational information.
VeesualFor letting online shoppers get an accurate view before they buy clothesOnline clothes shopping is notoriously hit-or-miss. While some companies have developed virtual AI models, they can distort the look of garments and the body itself. Veesual created an alternative, physics-informed approach, displaying clothes as theyd actually appear on a range of models and letting customers see how theyll look on someone like them. The startup has worked with brands such as Eileen Fisher, Lululemon, and Adore Me, and it raised a $7.5 million seed round in 2024.
The companies and individuals behind these technologies are among the honorees in Fast Companys Next Big Things in Tech awards for 2025. Read more about the winners across all categories and the methodology behind the selection process.
Even as digital and physical threats reach record levels, advances in security and privacy are giving us stronger defenses than ever before. New tools can now scan the wireless spectrum to flag hidden risks, protect faces and voices from AI misuse, map out who has access to sensitive data in real time, and guard large language models against prompt injection and data leaks. Together, these innovations are reshaping how we safeguard both our information and our personal safety.
Bastille NetworksFor keeping tabs on airborne threatsWireless signals are more crowded than ever, from Bluetooth and Wi-Fi to 5G and beyondand the data they carry is as valuable as anything sent over fiber. That makes them an appealing target for attackers. Bastilles platform uses software-defined radio and AI to map the wireless environment in real time, detect threats, and trigger instant alerts while integrating with major security platforms such as XDR, CAASM, SIEM, SOAR, and Zero Trust systems. Based in Santa Cruz, California, the company holds 34 patents, with more pending, and has tripled its annual recurring revenue in the past year. Its customers include Fortune 500 firms, government agencies, and military units, with deployments already protecting 5 million square feet of intelligence community facilities. In its most recent Series C round, Goldman Sachs joined Bessemer Venture Partners to invest $44 million.
Loti AIFor helping people control their name, image, and likeness in the AI eraHow do you keep control over your face in the age of AI? Loti AI does it at scale with a massive network of tens of thousands of servers that collectively scan everything uploaded to the internet each day. The three-year-old Seattle-based company’s system combines large-scale web crawling; multimodal detection across voice, image, and video; and an automated rights-enforcement layer tailored to the entertainment and media industry. Loti AI reports a 95% takedown success rate within 17 hours. With regulatory momentum from the proposed No Fakes Act, $16 million in new funding from Khosla Ventures, and partnerships across media and security, the company has also launched a free app for individuals.
PangeaFor keeping LLMs safe and secureAs companies adopt LLMs and AI-driven applications, protecting the data flowing through them has become a critical concern. Pangeas AI Guard acts as a proxy that developers can access via API, sitting between applications and the LLM or agent to defend against advanced prompt injection attacks such as token smuggling and multilingual exploits. Its suite of toolsincluding sensors and a Chrome extensionlets administrators monitor for sensitive-data leakage while applying native access controls for agentic and RAG systems. To keep latency low, Pangea uses smaller LLMs to flag malicious or inappropriate content and prevent confidential data from entering models. The four-year-old startup, which pivoted from cloud security after the rise of ChatGPT, was acquired by security giant CrowdStrike in September 2025.
VezaFor monitoring access and privileges in real timeAs apps, databases, and agents proliferate, companies are hard-pressed to know who has access to what, what they can do with that access, and whether they should even have it. While traditional identity governance tools rely on static roles and manual processes, Veza’s “identity security platform” looks at authorization metadata in real timethe data that governs what users and machines can actually do across apps, infrastructure, and data systems, from AWS and Salesforce to Active Directory and Snowflaketo build a dynamic graph of permissions across human and nonhuman identities. That hands admins more fine-grained visibility and control through risk detection, least privilege analysis, just-in-time access, and real-time access reviews. Founded five years ago in Los Gatos, California, Veza more than doubled sales last year and raised $108 million this spring in a round backed by Atlassian, Snowflake, and Workday, valuing the company at $800 million.
The companies and individuals behind these technologies are among the honorees in Fast Companys Next Big Things in Tech awards for 2025. Read more about the winners across all categories and the methodology behind the selection process.
Construction and real estate are in a challenging moment, with prices beyond reach for many buyers and little sign of near-term relief. Still, several recent breakthroughs could bring the goal of homeownership closer for more Americans, while other innovations focus on providing shelter for those who might otherwise go without.
BeewiseFor a buzzy way to help resurrect the bee populationHoneybee colonies in the United States could decline by as much as 70% in 2025, according to researchers at Washington State University. Beewise aims to counter that trend with the BeeHome, an autonomous hive that manages routine tasks and helps commercial beekeepers reduce colony losses. The system also considers human interaction, limiting nuisance when hives are placed near populated areas. Through Beewises app, beekeepers can monitor colonies with high-resolution cameras, track health metrics, and rely on AI and robotics to address problems in real time.
Cuby TechnologiesFor offering a possible solution for the housing crisisBy blending automation and modular manufacturing, Cuby can set up a housing factory in under two months and then produce 200 code-compliant homes every 30 days. Those domiciles are delivered at a 40% cost savings and with 80% less wasteand come with aerospace-level tolerances, making them a lot more durable than prefabricated homes. It’s more than theoretical: Cuby is already building homes in Eastern Europe and has deployed a facility outside of Las Vegas that will create 1,890 homes in the next 11 years.
iGuideFor making it easier for online home shoppers to narrow their listOnline listings have become a crucial part of the home-buying process, with shoppers looking for ways to evaluate properties efficiently. iGuide gives real estate professionals tools to create virtual tours and detailed floor plans, and the company says the technology can shorten sales timelines by up to 39%. The system relies on a 360-degree lidar-equipped camera from Planix that lets agents capture a property in full during a single visit.
Multiply MortgageFor making houses a little bit less expensive for buyersWith mortgage rates at 10-year highs and housing prices increasingly out of reach for first-time buyers, Multiply Mortgage offers a tool that can reduce loan interest rates by nearly a full percentage point. The platform uses AI to automate tasks such as document review, underwriting, and compliance checks, passing along savings that can lower rates by up to 0.75%. Borrowers are also paired with mortgage advisers for guidance throughout the process.
The companies and individuals behind these technologies are among the honorees in Fast Companys Next Big Things in Tech awards for 2025. Read more about the winners across all categories and the methodology behind the selection process.
A smooth retail experience depends on efficient shipping and hassle-free purchases, two elements that can create significant cost implications for retailers. These honorees in the commerce category are developing infrastructure that can make more efficient use of freight trucks, streamline theft detection, and ease the checkout process in warehouse club environments.
Flock FreightFor reducing inefficiency in truckloadsWhen it comes to freight trucks, wasted space is wasted money. Flock Freight estimates that the equivalent of one in three trucks runs empty because of inefficient deck-space utilization. The Certified B Corporation has built on its patented Shared Truckload technology, a kind of demand-side carpooling for boxes, with STL AddOns, which allow suppliers to dynamically add their compatible shipments even after a truck is en route, reducing costs for shippers and carriers while cutting emissions. One trucking customer says STL AddOns helped it achieve an 88% increase in earnings.
Sams ClubFor automating the receipt-checking processThe popularity of warehouse clubs often leads to long lines as staffers ensure that customers items appear on the receipt. To speed things along, Walmarts Sams Club has leveraged an array of cameras that point down at shoppers carts and use a proprietary computer vision algorithm that identities items using shape, size, color, and branding markers. The results are matched against a customers digital receipt within 400 milliseconds, eliminating the historic wait time when departing the store.
Toshiba Global Commerce SolutionsFor reducing retail shrink without hassling shoppersRetailers lose $100 billion to shoplifting, fraud, and just plain checkout error. The Toshiba Global Commerce Solutions ELERA Security Suite uses edge AI to help guard against this shrink at self-checkout lanes, produce scales, and grocery carts without bogging down the shopping process. The system also uses AI to help customers more easily ring up their own ordersby, for example, detecting the kind of unpackaged produce being checked out. In Toshibas 2024 fiscal year, ELERA processed more than 25 million transactions.
The companies and individuals behind these technologies are among the honorees in Fast Companys Next Big Things in Tech awards for 2025. Read more about the winners across all categories and the methodology behind the selection process.
The companies that create the foundational technologies that enable other companies progress are embracing AI, of course. But thats only part of the story. These honorees made big progress in 2025 on quantum computing, battery science, and other fronts.
AIStormFor giving sensors the power of neural networks AIStorms technology pushes AI to the edge of computing experiences by allowing sensors to run neural networksa feat with applications everywhere from consumer electronics to factory-floor robotics. The company has a deal with Audioscenic to put latency-free, position-adaptive 3D sound in laptops, monitors, and soundbars starting in 2026.
AlediaFor charting a bright future for AR glassesFor AR glasses to have a shot at catching on, they need display technology thats compact, power-efficient, and capable of rendering bright imagery. Aledias 3D nanowire microLEDs emit red, green, and blue light from a single chipa key to achieving those goals. To ensure scalable quality control, the company has invested $200 million in its own manufacturing line in Grenoble, France.
ClassiqFor helping experts harness quantum computings advancesAs quantum computings potential to blaze through algorithms that classical computers cant tackle at all edges toward reality, its time to think about implementing specific applications in a range of domains. Domain experts at companies such as BMW, Rolls-Royce, and Deloitte use Classiqs Qmod functional modeling language to design programs. Deep knowledge of quantum computing is not required. And the results run on cloud platforms from Amazon, Google, IBM, and Microsoft.
D-WaveFor showing what quantum computing can do right nowThe future of quantum computers is all about getting the technology out of the lab and into the real world. Available both as a cloud service and in an on-premises form, D-Waves sixth-generation Advantage2 computer packs more than 4,400 qubits, the building blocks of quantum computings unprecedented capabilities. Customers such as defense contractor Davidson Technologies are already using the Advantage2, whose annealing technology sets it apart from the more common gate-based designs used by other quantum computer manufacturers. In March, D-Wave reported that the Advantage2 performed a calculation job that would have taken the U.S. Department of Energys Frontier supercomputer almost a million years to complete.
EnovixFor building a battery for the AI eraThanks in part to AI, devices such as smartphones, headsets, and smart glasses are rapidly evolving. But most are still dependent on lithium-ion batteries, a technology that long ago plateauedand, under certain circumstance, can be dangerous. Enovixs fully active silicon anode batteries house strips of silicon in a steel container, overcoming the risk of swelling and damage thats inherent to lithium-ion battery design. The company, whose next-generation EX-2M battery offers 22% more energy density than lithium-ion, says it has agreements with large manufacturers of smartphones, mixed-reality headsets, and IoT products to adopt its batteries in upcoming devices.
The companies and individuals behind these technologies are among the honorees in Fast Companys Next Big Things in Tech awards for 2025. Read more about the winners across all categories and the methodology behind the selection process.
The next frontier of consumer tech isn’t just about adding more screens to your life or boosting your devices’ processing power. Instead, it’s empowering users to accomplish more, from powerful new maker tools to more efficient skincare solutions. On the home front, assistive robots are suddenly in reach, and AI cameras are learning to provide better pet care instead of just surveilling humans. Of course, there’s cool screen-related stuff too, including wildly thin foldable phones and increasingly immersive AR glasses.
AnkerFor 3D printing onto pretty much anythingPrinting 3D textures onto materials such as wood and metal usually requires industrial-grade tools, but Anker has plans to bring this technology home. Its $1,699 EufyMake E1 is about the size of a desktop computer and uses an ultraviolet lamp to cure a special kind of ink. Hobbyists can use it to print custom patterns and textures onto phone cases, glass bottles, ceramic plates, and more. Anker says it’s close to shipping the first units to early backers on Kickstarter, where the idea raised nearly $47 million.
HonorFor putting slimmer batteries in new placesHonor continues to prove that its foray into new battery chemistry isn’t a fluke. With its Magic V5 foldable phone, Honor has pushed battery capacity to 6,150 mAhversus 4,400 mAh on Samsung’s rival Galaxy Z Fold 7while still offering the slimmest foldable on the market. New efficiencies in its silicon carbon anode battery chemistry allow it to incorporate a record 25% silicon content, for an even denser battery. Honor has also brought the same type of battery to its MagicPad 3 tablet, hinting at a future in which all of our gadgets last longer on a charge.
L’OréalFor taking skincare analysis below the surface levelTo help folks find the right skincare products without months of tedious trial and error, L’Oréal believes it needs to get under the skin. With its Cell BioPrint assessment device, the company can analyze skin cell samples to determine their biological age and look for underlying issues such as chronic inflammation and mitochondrial dysfunction. Machine learning algorithms then generate personalized recommendations within minutes, based on how the skin might react to different ingredients. L’Oréal says it’s the culmination of more than a decade of research into the biomarkers that indicate potential skin problems. It plans to launch the tech in Asia later this year.
PetlibroFor building a pet cam with purposeFor pet owners who want to keep track of their furry friends throughout the workday, Petlibro aspires to do more than just capture video. Its Scout camera uses on-device image processing to recognize individual pets from multiple angles, then uses cloud processing to understand when they’re playing, eating, drinking, or using a litter box. Eventually, Petlibro hopes to flag signs of potential stress or illness so that owners can take action earlier. As a way to stay informed about pet behavior, it beats setting up a general-purpose webcam that surveils your entire family in the process.
RoborockFor giving a hand to robot vacuumsNew versions of robot vacuums tend to be pretty boring, with incremental upgrades to cleaning power or room mapping. Roborock‘s Saros Z70 includes something truly new, with a five-axis robotic arm that can pick up small objects and carry them to predefined spaces. While the arm’s only purpose right now is to move things out of the way while cleaning, it could also clear a path to more ambitious home robots that tackle a wider range of tasks.
XrealFor busting the AR glasses field wide openPeering through augmented-reality glasses can feel a bit claustrophobic, with narrow fields of view that squeeze whatever projected screen is in front of you. Xreal’s One Pro glasses represent a big step forward, with a 57-degree field of view that stretches the picture to your peripheral vision. For now, Xreal’s glasses mainly act as portable monitors that can plug into gaming systems, phones, and laptops, but a true foray into augmented reality is coming. The company is partnering with Google on a separate set of lightweight glasses for Gemini AI, codenamed Project Aura, with motion sensors for gesture control and cameras to interact with the outside world.
The companies and individuals behind these technologies are among the honorees in Fast Companys Next Big Things in Tech awards for 2025. Read more about the winners across all categories and the methodology behind the selection process.
If theres one thing businesses have in abundance, its datain some cases, far more of it than they know what to do with. AI can turn daunting mountains of information into knowledge thats accessible to staffers across the organization, regardless of their technical chops. These honorees are helping their customers unlock better understanding of data to do everything from supercharging sales teams to choosing the right music to license.
BasetenFor giving companies big and small a head start on inferenceAnyone building an AI application has access to powerful open-weight LLMs such as DeepSeek-R1. But the fact that the models are freely available doesnt mean theyre easy to adopt. Running on thousands of GPUs spread across more than 10 cloud providers, Basetens Inference Stack lets startups build apps based on open AI without having to assemble and manage their own infrastructure, freeing them from the need to sweat details like uptime and capacity. Startups such as Descript, Abridge, and Gamma build on Basetens platform; its customer base has grown 5.5x in the past year, with larger companies representing a growing percentage of the mix.
GongFor capturing the nuance of customer interactionsNo information is more valuable to companies than the data reflected in customer meetings, calls, emails, and other interactions. Gongs revenue AI is engineered to outperform general-purpose LLMs at extracting actionable insights from such data. The companys new AI Agents then use it to help revenue teams make strategic decisions relating to existing and prospective customers. In May, Gong announced a partnership with Microsoft that allows users to build custom autonomous agents for use in apps such as Teams, Outlook, and Dynamics 365 Sales.
IncortaFor letting companies talk to their dataIncortas Nexus is a generative AI platform designed to help people throughout companies get more out of live operational data stored in systems such as Oracle, SAP, and Workday. Its copilot-assisted experience allows employees to retrieve information by posing natural language questions, reducing their reliance on IT and data engineering teams. The list of big customers Incorta has signed upincluding Broadcom, Genworth, Shutterfly, and Skechersconveys Nexuss broad applicability.
KnownFor building an AI operating system for marketersMarketing agency Knowns Skeptic applies AI to an array of challenges faced by its clients. It can perform automated bidding on their behalf, track media spend efficiency, and score assets for brand compliance. A tool called The Big Lebotski helps marketers pinpoint Reddit conversations they might want to join. In the past 12 months, Known says, Skeptic has led its clients to more than $500 million in growth opportunities and savings.
SongtradrFor turning music into actionable dataSongtradr has used AI to generate more than 18,000 data points about each of the more than 200 million audio tracks its analyzed. That wealth of information powers multiple tools for its customers, including music licensing recommendations, MusicIQ scores that help brands connect with audiences, and enhanced search for global music platforms. More than 400 audio dimensions are covered by the companys analysis, including energy, genre, instrumentation, and mood.
The companies and individuals behind these technologies are among the honorees in Fast Companys Next Big Things in Tech awards for 2025. Read more about the winners across all categories and the methodology behind the selection process.
The coming years offer an opportunity to transform education. AI can provide precise insights about student needs and deliver lessons in a way that resonates with students interests and learning style. However, the technology also raises questions about academic integrity and the future nature of learning and teaching, questions that emerging tools are taking thoughtful approaches to addressing.
Amira LearningFor accelerating literacy with AI and neuroscienceThe Amira Reading Suite is designed to capture virtually every aspect of a students reading performance, using AI and neuroscience to prioritize instruction needs. Thanks to a partnership with Anthropic, the platform now provides instruction via voice-based conversations. Working in collaboration with educators, the company says its tool has been shown to accelerate reading growth by up to 70% faster than traditional methods, which translates into an average of seven additional weeks of reading growth in a single school year.
eSelfFor personalizing AI tutor avatarsMany students who could benefit from a tutor dont have that opportunity because of cost or location. eSelf is developing lifelike avatars that help students understand academic material, practice independently, and prepare for exams in more than 30 languages, with culturally relevant touches such as posing a question about baseball to a student in the U.S. versus one about soccer to a student in Brazil. In March 2025, the company teamed with Harvard and Israels largest textbook publisher to deploy its tutors to every school in Israel.
GrammarlyFor tackling AI cheating at the sourceLong before ChatGPT started composing essays, Grammarly was helping millions of users polish their prose. Now the company is focusing on helping students prove that their work is authentic. Taking advantage of the 500,000 apps and websites on which its used, its opt-in Authorship tool can identify which content has been generated by AI, modified by AI, pasted from another source, or edited by Grammarly or a native spell-checker. Launched in October 2024, the tool was used to generate more than 4 million reports in its first eight months.
The companies and individuals behind these technologies are among the honorees in Fast Companys Next Big Things in Tech awards for 2025. Read more about the winners across all categories and the methodology behind the selection process.
Companies that endure beyond 15 years understand that innovation is not optionalits essential to fend off constant disruption, stay ahead of competitors, and sustain growth. The opportunities are endless, from modernizing entrenched processes to strengthening business continuity.
AxonFor helping law enforcement coordinate manhuntsThe proliferation of public cameras, vehicle sensors, and other data sources can greatly aid law enforcement in locating suspects, but only if the information is efficiently collected and analyzed. Axon Fusus provides a unified interface that integrates video feeds, alerts, analytics, and vehicle data from Axon devices, community cameras, and partner technologies. The result is not just more effective pursuit but what one police captain describes as precision policing, where fewer innocent people are questioned.
Fusion Risk ManagementFor turning static continuity plans into actionable simulationsBusinesses often focus on refining operations when conditions are favorable but approach contingency planning with less urgency. Fusion Risk Management‘s BC Plan inFusion addresses this gap by eliminating the fragmentation and incompatibilities of traditional continuity plans using automated scenario testing, predictive modeling, and cross-functional coordination. Early adopters have cut manual plan-management time by more than 70%, while organizations that have faced crises report marked improvements in plan accuracy.
Milwaukee ToolFor helping pipe fitters find a new grooveFor decades, professionals needing to groove pipes faced a trade-off: portable tools that were difficult to operate or large machines that were cumbersome to deploy. Milwaukee Tools cordless M18 Fuel Roll Groover changes that equation, using built-in intelligence for quick setup and eliminating manual ratcheting and cranking. After an operator enters pipe specifications, the tool calculates the ideal force, speed, and indexing, adjusting automatically to the material. One foreman estimated it saved his crew 40 to 50 hours on a projectmuch of it otherwise spent on exhausting manual labor.
TraceLinkFor making the medical supply chain saferThe circulation of counterfeit or unsafe medications poses a serious public health risk. TraceLinks Opus is a supply chain management platform designed to bring order to a highly fragmented system spanning multiple transaction types and thousands of partners. Built for operations professionals without coding expertise, it helps ensure the safe and timely delivery of prescriptions.
The companies and individuals behind these technologies are among the honorees in Fast Companys Next Big Things in Tech awards for 2025. Read more about the winners across all categories and the methodology behind the selection process.
