**The Next Big Thing won’t be AI—because something that’s already everywhere doesn’t count as “next” anymore.

Chris Trottier

The Next Big Thing won’t be AI—because something that’s already everywhere doesn’t count as “next” anymore. It’ll be everything AI made you miss.

I’ve spent enough time watching hype cycles spin like a malfunctioning ceiling fan to finally say this with a straight face: the Next Big Thing isn’t a single thing at all. It’s a cluster of technologies that quietly moved from “sci-fi” to “oh wow this actually works” while everybody else was still arguing about whether a chatbot could replace a copywriter.

Synthetic biology is the first one. People still hear “synbio” and imagine glowing frogs or ethically questionable Jurassic Park internships, but the real story is that we can now program cells like we program servers. Not perfectly. Not cleanly. And definitely not without the occasional fermentation tantrum. But we’re crossing the threshold where enzymes, materials, fuels and drugs can be brewed like beer. This isn’t replacing one industry. It’s rewiring half the economy. And unlike crypto, you can actually hold a bioreactor and it doesn’t ask you to “HODL.”

Stats:

Global synthetic-biology market size ≈ USD 14.3 billion in 2024.
Projected synthetic-biology market size ≈ USD 63.8 billion by 2032 (CAGR ~20.7%).
VC / private investment into the synbio sector in 2024: USD 12.2 billion.
Global industrial enzymes market (a major synbio-driven sub-sector) ≈ USD 13.94 billion in 2024.
Drop in cost of genome-scale sequencing/synthesis over past two decades — enabling widespread bio-engineering (i.e. plummeting input costs for synbio R&D).

Further reading:

Batteries aren’t just improving. They’re mutating. Sodium-ion is the breakout star — cheap, abundant, non-flammable — and it blows a hole straight through the old lithium-only worldview. Suddenly grid storage gets affordable, EVs dodge fragile supply chains, and home batteries stop being luxury items. Add metal-air, iron-air and silicon-anode chemistries on top and you get a future where electrons are plentiful, storage is cheap and “energy scarcity” becomes a phrase future generations hear only in museums.

Stats:

Global value of battery packs in EVs and storage today is about $120B, projected to reach nearly $500B by 2030 in the IEA’s net-zero scenario.
The battery energy storage system market is forecast to grow from $37.2B in 2024 to $106.0B by 2030.
Global grid-scale battery storage capacity needs to expand 35×, reaching about 970 GW by 2030, to stay on a net-zero pathway.
Sodium-ion batteries are projected to grow from $0.67B in 2025 to $2.01B by 2030, a 24.7% CAGR, as a cheaper alternative to lithium-ion.
China’s sodium-ion market alone is expected to jump from 10 GWh in 2025 to 292 GWh by 2034, with the country supplying >90% of global sodium-ion production by 2030.

Further reading:

Next up is geothermal, which is the closest thing we have to a cheat code for the energy transition. It’s not a fantasy anymore. It’s directional drilling, fiber-optic sensing and heat reservoirs sitting under your feet quietly whispering, “Please free us so we can power your entire civilization.” As long as we don’t crack the crust of the Earth like an overcooked crème brûlée, this becomes 24/7 baseload renewable power. And every hyperscaler wants it yesterday.

Stats:

800 GW — That’s roughly the global geothermal capacity that could be deployed by 2050 under cost-effective scaling, enough to meet a large slice of rising electricity demand.
6,000 TWh/yr — The same modelling shows geothermal could generate ~6,000 terawatt-hours per year, equivalent to the current combined electricity demand of the U.S. + India.
16.9 GW — That’s the installed global geothermal electricity capacity as of end-2024. We haven’t tapped even 2% of the upside yet.
USD 9.8 B → USD 13.6 B by 2030 — Market size growth forecast (CAGR ~5.3 %) for the global geothermal energy market.
≥ 700 M USD — Private-sector fundraising into geothermal over the last few years; capital flow accelerating as technologies mature and risk drops.

Further reading:

Water tech is the sleeper. Nobody thinks about water until they don’t have any. But membranes, desalination upgrades and atmospheric water generation are hitting the same quiet tipping point solar hit in 2009. First they’re niche. Then they’re boring. Then they’re everywhere. And we’re heading into a decade where “local water manufacturing” becomes as normal as local energy generation. When water becomes infrastructure you can deploy, regions rewrite their entire economic futures.

Stats:

USD 20.6B — estimated global water-desalination market value in 2024.
USD 44.0 B — projected size of the global desalination market by 2033 (CAGR ~12.8 %) as water stress and technology adoption rise.
USD 2.45B — estimated global market for atmospheric water-generation systems in 2023.
USD 4.55 B — projected global atmospheric water-generation market by 2030 (CAGR ~9.4 %) as scarcity and demand grow.
USD 35.9 B — approximate 2024 global value of water desalination and purification equipment, with forecasts targeting ~US$ 77.8 B by 2034 (8.3 % CAGR) as infrastructure expands.

Further reading:

And finally, robotics. The one everyone thinks is already here, even though we’re barely in chapter two of the story. Robotics isn’t the future. Robotics is gravity now. Warehouses, hospitals, farms, construction sites, retail. Everywhere humans stand around doing repetitive physical tasks, a robot is slowly rolling up with the energy of “I’m not here to replace you, I’m here because nobody else applied.” The labour shortage isn’t going away. Robots aren’t hype. They’re inevitability with motors.

Stats

≈ 4.66 million industrial robots are now operating globally (2024) — up ~9% from last year.
USD 53.2 billion — estimated size of the global robotics market in 2024.
Forecast to hit ≈ USD 178.7 billion by 2033 (CAGR ~16 % from 2025-33).
Warehouse-robotics subset alone was USD 5.82 billion in 2024, projected to reach ≈ USD 18 billion by 2032.
At least USD 4.35 billion was invested globally into robotics startups just in July 2025 (93 funding rounds).

So when I talk about the Next Big Thing, I’m not talking about a trend.

I’m talking about the rising stack of real-world technologies that quietly crossed the threshold from “interesting” to “inevitable” while everyone else was still hypnotized by language models arguing about how to spell “solopreneur.” This is biology you can brew, energy you can bottle, heat you can tap, water you can manufacture and machines that don’t get tired.

This is the moment where physical technology stops waiting its turn and finally bulldozes past the digital world. The real breakthroughs aren’t happening on your screen. They’re happening under your feet, in your factories, in your grid, in your water supply, and soon in every corner of the built environment.

And for once, the revolution won’t be an app—it’ll be the infrastructure that makes apps look small.

bookandswordblog

@atomicpoet this writing reads like slop on a LinkedIn page

Chris Trottier

bookandswordblog Yes, I use AI. I’ve used it for years. And no, I’m not going back to “raw, unfiltered” writing because AI saves me an enormous amount of pain and grief.

I’ve explained this before. Consider this yet another entry in that series:

https://atomicpoet.org/notice/B0kN6P79hir0xDxANk

Wandering Adventure Party

**The Next Big Thing won’t be AI—because something that’s already everywhere doesn’t count as “next” anymore.