AI Horizon

The AI frontier and the private sector READ MORE

A year in AI Jump to

AI trend radar Jump to

Frontier models and innovation Jump to

Spotlight: AI in the private sector Jump to

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Our AI-native edge Jump to

A year in AI In technology terms, a year is a long time. When considering the global AI race, it can feel like lightyears. And these past 12 months, characterised by unparalleled innovation and strategic shifts, have been a notable inflection point.

Rapid advances in model performance from key players like Anthropic and DeepSeek are fundamentally transforming what’s achievable with AI. And new entrants, such as Perplexity AI, are redefining information access and challenging traditional search.

Beyond capabilities, industry luminaries,

Global innovation Europe leads on regulation and open models US leads in foundation models and commercial AI China focuses on state-aligned multilingual models

such as Open AI’s Sam Altman and design

Asia grows sovereign AI

guru Jony Ive, are exploring the possibilities

Middle East invests in national AI

of AI-powered hardware. Technology beyond screens is surely not far away.

Africa targets local-language and impact-driven AI

Alongside these boundary pushing leaps, growing geopolitical investment and the spread of open-source innovation have transformed the AI landscape into a truly global competition.

From regulatory breakthroughs in Europe to sovereign AI programs in Asia and the Middle East, nations are staking their claims, not just as users of AI, but as shapers of its future. At the same time, frontier models are evolving into real-time, multimodal systems with broad commercial and societal impact, promising to reshape industries and daily life.

Models and applications Frontier models advance reasoning and tool use Multimodal systems integrate text, vision, and audio

If this was the past 12 months in AI, what will this time next year look like?

Open-source models scale globally Small/edge models power mobile AI Agents emerge for real-time tasks Enterprise and creative AI expand mainstream adoption

AI trend radar Sector-specific AI applications are increasing in number and reaching operational deployment

Rise of Agents 5

Transformative Impact

5 4

R&D Circles 3

Significant Impact

Operationalising AI 3

Significant Impact

3 2 1 0

Multi-modal AI 4

High Impact

Security & Trust 4

High Impact

AI sector trends Public Sector AI-Driven Operational Efficiency Predictive Analytics

Manufacturing Predictive Maintenance with IoT & ML

Healthcare AI-Assisted Patient Care and Predictive Diagnostics Accelerated Drug Discovery

Capital Markets AI-Driven Algorithmic Trading

Retail Personalised Shopping via Recommendation Engines

Insurance Automated Claims Processing

Frontier models and innovation “Frontier models are reshaping what’s possible in AI. To unlock real value, we must go beyond APIs and understand how to tailor these models to our specific needs.”

Filippo Sassi Head of AI Labs, Version 1

DeepSeek R2

OpenAI o3 and o4-mini

Early 2025 release

Reasoning champions

AI model from Chinese

OpenAI’s most powerful AI

startup DeepSeek.

DeepSeek-R2 brings major advancements in understanding multiple

model, excelling in complex tasks like coding, math,

science, and understanding images.

languages, writing computer

A smaller, faster, and more

code, and handling various

affordable version, o4-mini,

data types like text, images,

still performs remarkably well

and sounds. Through efficient

for its size, particularly in math,

training methods, it aims to

coding, and visual tasks, even

seriously compete with top

topping the AIME 2024 and

Silicon Valley AI.

2025 benchmarks.

Qwen3

Meta Llama 4 o4-mini

Microsoft Phi-4

BitNet b1.58 2B4T

235B-A22B flagship

Scout and Maverick models

14B parameters

Ternary architecture

Qwen3 is the newest

A new app uses Meta’s Llama

Phi-4 models offer powerful,

responses, learning from user

devices.

powerful AI model in the Qwen family.

Its flagship model performs

4 for highly personalized

efficient AI for constrained

preferences and profile data

The 14-billion- parameter

very competitively in coding,

(with permission).

math, and general AI tasks,

It supports voice, text, and

matching up against other top

image generation, alongside a

models like DeepSeek- R1 and

social “Discover” feed. Meta

Gemini-2.5-Pro. What’s more,

also offers a free preview of

even its smaller versions

the Llama API for developers

deliver impressive

to build with Llama 4 models.

version outperforms smaller rivals and matches much larger models (671B parameters). Its 3.8-billionparameter mini version runs on mobile, matching larger models in math. All open-

performance, rivaling models

source for unrestricted

significantly larger than

commercial use.

themselves.

Microsoft’s new BitNet b1.58 model uses a ternary

architecture to achieve

computational efficiency.

It has a comparable performance to larger models while running on a simple desktop CPU with minimal memory requirements.

Spotlight: AI in the public sector Enterprise AI adoption is transforming core business operations across healthcare, manufacturing, and financial services.

From diagnostic AI supporting physicians to warehouse robots revolutionising logistics, AI is augmenting human expertise at unprecedented scale.

HEALTHCARE

OpenAI HealthBench What it is: Comprehensive healthcare AI benchmark with 5,000 conversations across 262 physicians, 60 countries, 49 languages, and 26 specialties.

Why it matters: o3 reasoning model leads performance, followed by Grok and Gemini 2.5 Pro, establishing new standards for medical AI evaluation.

What’s next: Global deployment of diagnostic AI systems matching physician-level accuracy and empathy.

FINANCE

MANUFACTURING

Mastercard Agent Pay

Amazon Vulcan Robots

What it is: AI-powered payment platform integrating secure

What it is: Advanced warehouse automation robots designed

authentication.

centres.

Why it matters: Combines AI agents with best-in-class fraud

Why it matters: Significant advancement in warehouse

conversations.

across Amazon’s logistics network.

What’s next: Expansion to more AI platforms and integration

What’s next: Broader deployment across fulfilment centres

transactions into conversational AI experiences with biometric

protection, enabling seamless payment experiences within AI

of advanced on-device biometric security features.

to solve complex cluttered bin picking challenges in fulfilment

automation, enhancing operational efficiency and productivity

and potential licensing to other logistics companies.

Our approach is

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By combining AI with high- quality data, we accelerate productivity, boost efficiency, and enable better decision-making for sustained success

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