2025: The rise of AI agents transforming global business

The year 2025 is poised to be transformative for the technology sector, with artificial intelligence (AI) at the forefront of change. Industry leaders across various disciplines are making bold predictions about how AI and associated technologies will reshape the landscape of business operations and collaboration.

Jamil Valliani, Head of Product, AI at Atlassian, foresees 2025 as "the year of the AI agent." Valliani notes that AI agents are set to become significantly more interactive and capable of handling not just text but also audio and visual elements. These advancements are expected to facilitate a substantial cultural shift in human-AI collaboration, achieving higher efficiency in task management and productivity. Valliani predicts that AI agents will mature to the point of performing specialised tasks independently, integrating seamlessly with various products, and collaborating with teams much like human colleagues.

The anticipated evolution of AI agents is attributed to their continual development through foundation models, which allow these agents to reason over complex data sets and take more actions autonomously. This will enable them to manage increasingly complex problems and deliver outcomes comparable to human teammates, ultimately fostering novel forms of team interaction and collaboration.

In parallel, Joe Thomas, Head of Product Management at Loom, believes the forthcoming year will witness the widespread adoption of asynchronous work as the core of AI-driven collaboration. He highlights the importance of asynchronous video communication, which AI can transform into metadata and text, supporting productive workflows and generating actionable insights. As companies move towards a more asynchronous working style, leveraging AI to facilitate these shifts is expected to result in significant productivity gains by transcending the limitations of time zones and traditional human-AI interaction models.

From a channel sales perspective, David Keogh, Senior Director Sales & Channel EMEA at Dropbox, envisions AI and multi-cloud strategies as pivotal to the industry's evolution in 2025. Keogh notes that AI will enable partners to better anticipate customer needs, streamline operations, and deliver personalised solutions at scale. He stresses the importance of security within this transformation, with AI-driven tools offering seamless, secure integrations necessary for managing increasingly intricate business ecosystems.

Keogh underscores the emerging role of AI as a collaborative force that demands a customer-centric mindset from businesses and partners. In this new era, distributors and vendors will need to guide customers in navigating AI responsibly, focusing on trust and privacy while leveraging AI's transformative potential. This will necessitate a shift from traditional transactional business models to ecosystems based on value-driven collaboration.

The predictions from Valliani, Thomas, and Keogh collectively paint a picture of a future where AI acts as a significant enabler across various sectors. AI's capability to enhance productivity, streamline workflows, and redefine business relationships is expected to drive growth and innovation while maintaining a strong emphasis on security and responsible technology use.

As companies and leaders prepare for this impending wave of AI-driven transformation, it is clear that the relationship between humans and machines will enter a new phase of collaboration. This evolution will shape the operational and strategic approaches in businesses globally, marking 2025 as a landmark year for AI in the professional realm.