{"id":25978,"date":"2026-06-23T10:28:42","date_gmt":"2026-06-23T10:28:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/06\/23\/tech-race-moves-from-ai-to-factories-hospitals-and-power-grids-world-economic-forum-and-frontiers-reveal-top-10-emerging-technologies-of-2026-frontiers\/"},"modified":"2026-06-23T10:28:42","modified_gmt":"2026-06-23T10:28:42","slug":"tech-race-moves-from-ai-to-factories-hospitals-and-power-grids-world-economic-forum-and-frontiers-reveal-top-10-emerging-technologies-of-2026-frontiers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/06\/23\/tech-race-moves-from-ai-to-factories-hospitals-and-power-grids-world-economic-forum-and-frontiers-reveal-top-10-emerging-technologies-of-2026-frontiers\/","title":{"rendered":"Tech race moves from AI to factories, hospitals, and power grids: World Economic Forum and Frontiers reveal Top 10 Emerging Technologies of 2026 – Frontiers"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the Top 10 Emerging Technologies of 2026 report co-published by the World Economic Forum and Frontiers, cutting-edge technologies act directly on power grids, drug pipelines, food production, cooling systems, mining, and robotics \u2013 marking a shift from software-first AI to physical systems.<\/em>
The World Economic Forum and Frontiers today co-published the Top 10 Emerging Technologies of 2026<\/em> report<\/a>. Frontiers brings editorial expertise and data-driven insights to the report, identifying the technologies most likely to shape industry, policy, and society over the next five years. After years of software-first AI development, the technologies with the greatest impact are moving off screens and into the physical systems that underpin modern economies \u2013 energy, medicine, food, and materials. The top ten emerging technologies of 2026 are:
Everything-to-grid energy<\/strong> \u2013 electric vehicles and buildings store and return energy to the grid on demand, enabling two-way flow at scale.
Direct lithium extraction<\/strong> \u2013 replacing slow evaporation ponds with engineered systems that pull battery-grade lithium from salt flats in hours.
Passive radiative cooling materials<\/strong> \u2013 keeping buildings cool without consuming any power by reflecting sunlight directly through the atmosphere, back into space.
PFAS destruction<\/strong> \u2013 breaking down \u201cforever chemicals\u201d into harmless, natural substances for clean drinking water.
Precision fermentation<\/strong> \u2013 brewing food ingredients and medicines using genetically programmed microbes, electricity, and sugar in fermentation tanks.
Exosome drug delivery<\/strong> \u2013 using the human body\u2019s natural cellular packages to deliver targeted medicines precisely to diseased cells.
Personalized mRNA cancer vaccines<\/strong> \u2013 training a patient\u2019s immune system to find and destroy cancer cells using vaccines tailored to their tumor.
Quantum simulation for drug discovery<\/strong> \u2013 identifying the most promising drug candidates by simulating how they behave, cutting the time and cost of research.
World models<\/strong> \u2013 AI systems learn how the physical world behaves from multi-modal data, predicting outcomes of scenarios like superstorms.
Lattice-based cryptography<\/strong> \u2013 next-generation math codes that protect sensitive digital data from being hacked by future quantum computers.
Eight of the ten technologies act directly on physical systems. Competitive advantage is moving from software toward the ability to control infrastructure, materials, biological processes, and industrial data. At the same time, several technologies in this year\u2019s report are breaking the link between geography and production, allowing critical goods to be made in places where climate or geology previously made it impossible.
Methodology and transformation maps: navigating the future with the help of AI<\/strong>
This year\u2019s report was produced using an AI-based nomination workflow developed by Frontiers. The workflow systematically screened more than 1,200 candidate technologies across academic publications and industry sources, with cross-model validation. The list was then refined through expert assessment of each technology\u2019s novelty and real-world impact potential, before final Advisory Council review.
To support strategic planning across technology, industry, and policy, Frontiers\u2019 chief editors co-developed a series of Transformation Maps<\/a>, hosted on the World Economic Forum's Strategic Intelligence Platform. These interactive maps offer a live view of how each technology is developing across sectors. The report, complemented by these interactive maps, facilitates decision-making by connecting each technology to global priorities and cross-domain implications.
Stephan Mergenthaler<\/strong>, Managing Director of the World Economic Forum, said:
\u201cWhile each of these technologies has the potential to make a meaningful impact on its own, together they tell a broader story about where innovation is heading. They reveal new patterns across energy, medicine, and manufacturing that could challenge long-held assumptions about how we use technology to address some of the world\u2019s most pressing challenges such as food insecurity, climate change, and untreatable diseases.\u201d<\/em>
Frederick Fenter<\/strong>, Chief Executive Editor of Frontiers, said:
\u201cThis year\u2019s report marks a decisive shift \u2013 the technologies with the greatest impact are shifting from software towards the physical realm \u2013 even as artificial intelligence continues to support progress on many fronts. As an AI-first research publisher, Frontiers used an AI-based discovery tool to identify and categorize this year's list of emerging technologies. By connecting research insights from the innovation sector to broader society through this annual report, we are providing a shared evidence base for policymakers, industry leaders, and research institutions on how these technologies will unfold to bring us a more resilient world.\u201d<\/em>
About Frontiers<\/strong>
Frontiers is a leading research publisher on a mission to accelerate collaboration and discovery by making science open \u2013 enabling researchers to find the solutions we all need for healthy lives on a healthy planet. Powered by custom-built technology, artificial intelligence, and efficient and rigorous peer review, Frontiers community journals give experts in more than 1,700 academic fields an open access platform to publish high quality, high impact research. Through outreach work to build strong partnerships with businesses, policymakers, and educators, Frontiers leads the transition to open science.
June 23, 2026
Editor
Share on WeChat
Scan with WeChat to share this article
Get the latest research updates, subscribe to our newsletter<\/p>\n

source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the Top 10 Emerging Technologies of 2026 report co-published by the World Economic Forum and Frontiers, cutting-edge technologies act directly on power grids, drug pipelines, food production, cooling systems, mining, and robotics \u2013 marking a shift from software-first AI to physical systems.The World Economic Forum and Frontiers today co-published the Top 10 Emerging Technologies […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25979,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25978","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25978","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25978"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25978\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25979"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}