Seattle area tech industry stands to gain from GenAI: Insights from local Deloitte leader

Business Journals

30-04-2025

Seattle, always a leader in technological innovation, stands to gain significantly from some of the biggest trends we forecast for the tech sector in the coming years. The city and its major tech companies, engineering centers and thriving tech talent pool will enable the region to capitalize on a surge in global IT investment. In addition, some 13,000 tech companies call the area home and they attract more than 275,000 workers, along with significant U.S. venture capital investment.
Analysts project that global IT spending will grow by 9.3% in 2025, with data center and software segments expected to grow at double-digit rates. Worldwide spending on AI is anticipated to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 29% from 2024 to 2028.
A major source of opportunity is GenAI, as well as emerging and evolving AI technologies such as agentic AI. In short, artificial intelligence is and will continue to drive transformational changes for businesses, in back- and front-office operations, product development and software engineering and product and service offerings.
Much of the energy and investment is coming from within tech itself — nearly a third of tech leaders surveyed by Deloitte's State of Generative AI in the Enterprise Q4 report rapid adoption of GenAI by their companies —compared with 11% of leaders in other industries. In tech companies, at-scale implementations are progressing fastest in IT (including cybersecurity), followed by product development and research and development — outpacing nontech organizations.
But growth in this sector depends on building trust, security, governance and overall data quality. Deloitte's analysis of companies adopting GenAI has identified a group of 'trust builders' that place greater emphasis on data quality, governance and security capabilities, along with reducing algorithmic hallucinations. In addition, trust builders prioritize employee transparency about goals and potential impacts and show empathy and kindness across tool adoption.
In our analysis, 40% of tech companies fall into the proactive trust builder category — versus only 27% of nontech organizations. Attention to trust appears to pay off: trust builders are 18% more likely than other organizations to rank in the top third of companies achieving expected benefits from GenAI (including improving products and services, spurring innovation and growth, improving productivity and efficiency, reducing costs, enhancing customer relationships and increasing revenue).
We see similar focus on trust in the consumer sector – among early GenAI adopters, those who report high or very high trust that their data is secure are more likely to say they use GenAI daily and that it 'significantly exceeds' their expectations. Trust builds confidence and confidence builds engagement.
But there is work to be done here. Our report highlighted that while 82% of surveyed executives believe secure, trustworthy AI is essential, only 24% of current GenAI projects are secured — potentially leaving sensitive data and models exposed.
A major factor for building consumer trust appears to be how well GenAI providers manage and provide control over the data they collect. The Deloitte Connected Consumer Survey found that only 17% of GenAI adopters feel their technology providers supply 'very clear' data privacy and security policies and give them 'very easy' control over their data. But in this group, 69% report high or very high trust that their GenAI providers will keep their data secure, while only 8% report low or very low trust.
In contrast, among the 83% of GenAI adopters who don't consider their providers' privacy and security policies to be very clear or who find it hard to control their data, only 16% report a high or very high level of trust, while 44% report low or very low trust. This disparity highlights a path forward for GenAI providers: To help earn user trust and broader acceptance of GenAI technologies, they should not only enhance the security features of their offerings but also work to ensure that data policies are communicated clearly and that it's easy for users to manage their data (for example, to limit or customize what data gets collected).
Seattle tech leaders not only need to lead in providing the best technology, but to lead in building trust, whether through policy or in data privacy and security. Cloud environments, for example, which manage critical data should be protected with robust encryption and Zero Trust architectures that require continuous verification of user and device identities.
In my view, this will play to this area's strengths. Seattle's strong foundation of tech leadership and knowhow can deliver not only the growth promised by today's GenAI opportunities but also secure the infrastructure and supply chains behind it.
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