The Hottest Industries Of 2035

Forbes

a day ago

While many of us let technology happen to us, the fact is that we are not mere passengers on a timeline. We can be, and are, builders of it. The next wave is forming across computing, biology, aerospace, logistics, and culture. The winners will be those who commit capital, talent, and national intent now. The rest will read about it later. In this article, I want to share with you my views on ten potential game changing industries of the future.
So, here we go:
1) Next-gen computers leave the von Neumann lane
New stacks are coming. Quantum, neuromorphic, and algorithmic platforms built around generative models will not "accelerate" legacy apps. They will enable new classes of simulation, search, and control. Think cryptography re-written. Drug discovery measured in months. Climate tooling that guides action rather than reporting doom. The lesson from every platform shift still applies. Those who own compute, data, and deployment pipelines set the rules.
Keep in mind, though, that Quantum Computers are not going to replace conventional, or classical, computers. They can be faster at certain types of tasks, but they are not general purpose replacements. One of the most promising applications for QC may be materials simulations.
Will the Nvidia of the future be a neuromorphic company? The way to think about Neuromorphic systems is that they could spark the next Deep Learning like revolution. Just as big GPUs from companies like Nvidia gave us the current AI book, neuromorphic systems can deliver lots of progress in a promising new neural network architecture called spiking neural networks. These may work more like the human brain and may deliver lower power consumption and greater robustness to adversarial attacks.
2) Space becomes a middle-class experience
Reusable heavy-lift is crushing launch costs, and orbital logistics are industrializing. There are more than a hundred satellite launch vehicle (SLV) companies in operation all over the world. From Germany's Isar Aerospace, to Austin's Firefly. Many of these companies will not make it, but enough of them will so that launch capacity will soon be available in excess. There will be so much of it, in fact, that we'll be able to justify the use of SLV capacity for fun. Space tourism will follow the same curve as every breakthrough transport technology. Not overnight. Then suddenly routine. The long game is not the selfie at apogee. It is the hotel in space. The supply chain and the on-orbit factory, and the nation that can surge capability above the Kármán line.
3) Medicine gets personal, at the code level
Gene editing is out of the lab and into the clinic. Regulators have already cleared first-of-kind genetic treatments for inherited blood disease. Next comes programmable protein design and whole-patient therapies with real-time monitoring and AI guidance. Technologies like these will allow us to "manage" disease less, and cure it outright, more.
4) Spatial Computing & BCI: Programmable reality
Apple joined the fray with an initial offering that didn't do too well. But they have validated the opportunity that exists along the enterprise path. I am convinced others will follow. Spatial computing is graduating from demos to real work. I've personally seen how a slew of industrial companies are already trying to use VR/AR headsets to improve training and in-context assistance for key maintenance and manufacturing tasks. Thanks to science fiction, movies and the glimpses of compelling content we've experienced ourselves, the endpoint of "The Metaverse" is obvious. We will hold board meetings, perform maintenance, and train workforces inside persistent, shared environments that feel native. Brain-computer interfaces add a new input layer for accessibility first, then performance. Invasive methods are acceptable when the alternatives are more dire, but to gain mainstream adoption BCI technology will have to deliver low latency and high resolution with non-invasive sensors.
5) Cities become farms
Over this past century, as population ballooned, so much land came under cultivation that many of us wondered whether the trend was sustainable. Carbon sequestration performed naturally by large rainforests was threatened as trees were cleared to make room for crops. All of this was done in the name of food security. But what if we don't need as much land to produce far more agricultural output? What if food security becomes an urban service? Vertical farms will handle a meaningful slice of leafy greens, berries, and herbs inside metro areas. All of this is now beginning to get built out at industrial scale. Dubai's Bustanica shows the model at seven-figure annual output with far less water. Expect wide-spread AI-orchestrated environments, electrified logistics, and crop portfolios tuned to local demand and price stability.
6) The sky turns into a managed highway
Urban air mobility is moving from render to route map. United and Archer named O'Hare to Vertiport Chicago as an initial corridor. The FAA is rumoured to be relaxing beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) rules soon. Many aviation authorities across East Asia and the Middle East are leaning in to a safe but more liberal regulatory regime. Certification progress continues at pace, and the traffic system for autonomous flight is taking shape through aviation-grade software platforms. The public consciousness is still all about "flying cars," but the drone revolution is about far more. Millions of autonomous aircraft safely integrated into the sky, at the same time. Logistics. Medicine. Safety. Security. Better citizen empowerment. Improved resource management. More effective urban regulatory enforcement. The applications are a mile long and can all drive the saving of time, the enablement of density, and ultimately improve national competitiveness.
7) Water moves from scarcity story to solvable problem
Regions that embraced desalination at scale show that fresh water can indeed become a far more renewable resource than we previously thought possible. Ground water consumption in heavily populated areas, and national disagreements over waterways can create water stress. Water stress that can become an existential worry. But to solve this, we will soon pair at scale, next-gen reverse osmosis with renewables, recover energy inside the plant, then add atmospheric harvesting and advanced purification at the edge. The largest membrane facilities now output city-scale volumes. With a population of about 20 million residents, Karachi is one of the largest cities in the world. It is now investing in a new desalination plant that will deliver drinking water to millions. Adoption was fastest in the Gulf, but now is spreading beyond.
8) Entertainment outgrows venue physics
We will produce, tour, and attend without the bottlenecks of stage and stadium. Holographic and fully immersive shows will anchor new districts built for digital spectacle. Riyadh's Mukaab is a preview of how architecture, optics, and compute fuse into a new format. Artists perform once. Millions attend synchronously across continents. This holds the promise of changing the economics and technology of entertainment. All the while, bringing culture-scale immersive experiences to people all over the world.
9) Organs on demand
Xenotransplant milestones and bioprinted tissues point to a different future for transplantation. In due time, the queue will give way to manufacturing and matching. Early cases are here, pioneered by companies like Cellink and Aspect biosystems, and the toolchain is improving fast. There is an opportunity to invest in scaffolds, cell sources, and the automation that makes quality repeatable. Lives obviously depend on it.
10) Robots become colleagues
Humanoids and bio-inspired machines are leaving the lab and earning paychecks. Apptronik's Apollo is in automotive trials. Figure is piloting with BMW. Agility's Digit is hauling totes in live warehouses under commercial agreements. And Argon Mechatronics is producing robots which have the ability to manufacture with great prevision. The pattern is clear. Start with dull and repetitive. Add perception, dexterity, and tool use. Then scale. This is an augmentation story, and despite how it is often presented, not primarily a mechanism to eliminate jobs. There are many brutal, unsafe, highly regulated jobs which these robots can perform to drive economic success. The outcomes of that success can be reinvested in creating entirely new industries for humans to continue to contribute to. This, after all, has been the story of human progress.
The Takeaways
The industries I've highlighted above are not niche verticals, though some of them are just starting to take off now and may seem to be. Most of these will be technologies in mass use and of global importance. Many of them, such as non-von Neumann computing, aerial autonomy, water and environmental tech will be critical to national capability. Sovereign supply chains and local industry will matter. Partnerships, as always, will be a definite accelerant but a high degree of critical capability should probably be insourced given the winds of change currently sweeping across the landscape of geopolitics. In a nutshell, here's a four-point playbook for national and commercial leaders looking to prepare for 2035:
Own infrastructure. Compute, energy, water, and airspace integration are critical capabilities.
Back applied research. Fund teams that ship into regulated, mission-critical contexts.
Pilot in the real world. One route, one plant, one line. Then replicate.
Create & enable builders. Policy matters. So do people who can weld, code, and certify. Nation states need to invest in the development of engineering talent, while companies develop the right org structures to pair humans with machines to build tomorrow's cybernetic enterprise.
The future belongs to those who build it, not those who forecast it. If you want a map of success for 2035, study the technologies we've covered. Then, find who is building and shipping early capabilities in 2025. Then, as a team member, as a government enabler, or as an investor, join them.