By: Anirban Sarma with Sauradeep Bag, Anulekha Nandi, Prateek Tripathi, and Siddharth Yadav
The following excerpt is from Chapter 3 — Technology of ORF Global Quarterly: Navigating Megatrends for 2026.
The year 2025 saw several disruptive and emerging technologies advance from rhetoric, and experimentation, into ongoing expansion, to an accelerated phase of growth. Many of these developments were accompanied or driven by policies that are expected to influence tech futures worldwide. At the same time, as geopolitical flux increasingly defined the Zeitgeist, there emerged a rising sense of urgency about the need for digital sovereignty.
Taken together, artificial intelligence (AI), quantum computing, digital currencies, and nanotechnology represent a frontier where technology, power, and the political economy increasingly converge. AI is reshaping multiple domains of human activity. Quantum computing has the potential to disrupt existing advantages in encryption and transform information processing, thereby opening new avenues for scientific discovery. Digital currencies pose challenges to conventional monetary instruments and payment architectures, enabling new forms of statecraft and financial inclusion. Nanotechnology is driving advances in materials and electronics, with wide-ranging sectoral implications. The present article examines key megatrends associated with these technologies, and considers their possible trajectories in 2026.
1. ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: RAPID AND FRAGMENTED GROWTH
As AI stakeholders prepare for the international AI Impact Summit to be hosted in India in February 2026, there has been a subtle shift in global conversations on AI. While earlier emphasis on AI safety, regulation, development, and governance will remain crucial, 2026 is expected to bring a growing focus on AI impacts and use cases. Indeed, AI applications and their impact could contribute USD 15.7 trillion to global GDP by 2030.
The United States (US) and China are expected to remain dominant in the AI race, with their technology ecosystems exercising the greatest influence. Powerful competing chatbots released in 2025 partly illustrate this ongoing contest for supremacy. Deep Seek-R1, launched in January with 671 billion parameters, highlights China’s emphasis on frugal innovation, while OpenAI’s GPT-5, launched in August, was introduced as a successful extension of the ChatGPT family of generative AI models.
AI governance is set to enter a defining yet fragmented phase. This is an area where the voice and position of the Global South are expected to gain greater prominence, building on seminal articulations of 2025, such as the BRICS Leaders’ Statement on the Global Governance of AI and India’s recently launched Governance Guidelines. The former emphasizes AI cooperation, sovereignty, and development rooted in rights and personal data safeguards; while the latter foregrounds trust, a people-first approach, responsible innovation, fairness and equity, transparency and accountability, and safety and sustainability. These points of focus differ markedly from those of the US AI Action Plan of 2025 which adopts a pro-innovation deregulatory stance designed to reinforce American leadership. At the same time, the stringent risk-based regulation of the European Union AI Act, which enters into force in August 2026, embodies a contrasting approach that some observers caution may constrain innovation.
Four megatrends will define technology in 2026 — this is just one. Discover the other three in ORF Global Quarterly: Navigating Megatrends for 2026.