Ten new technologies, identified in international organisation the World Economic Forum's (WEF's) 'Top 10 Emerging Technologies Report 2026', are approaching a critical inflection point where advances in research are beginning to translate into large-scale, real-world applications. Many of the technologies highlighted in the report indicate that systems may become more distributed, personalised and resource-efficient over time.

After years of software-first artificial intelligence (AI) development, the technologies with huge impact are moving off screens and into the physical systems that underpin modern…

List developed in collaboration with Dubai Future Foundation