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AI and world models, precision bioengineering, quantum technologies, next-generation energy systems, and advanced materials are five areas with the potential to change how research, health care, manufacturing, energy, and digital security work. They are not a definitive ranking: the World Economic Forum’s 2026 emerging-technologies report selects ten technologies, while a separate WEF report examines eight areas of technological convergence. This five-part grouping brings related developments together; whether they become disruptive depends on how well they scale and earn public trust.
What “disruptive” means—and what the forecast can tell us
A technology is disruptive when it changes an important process, cost, supply chain, or way of delivering a service—not simply because it is new. The five areas below could affect different parts of daily life, but their outcomes are conditional. A promising capability may remain limited if it cannot be integrated into existing systems, supported by infrastructure, governed safely, or made accessible beyond a small group of users.
The WEF’s 2026 emerging-technologies list focuses on technologies expected to approach real-world impact over the next three to five years. That is evidence of nearer-term momentum, not a guarantee of widespread adoption by 2036. The five areas here are an editorial synthesis, not a forecast ranking published by the WEF or another single source.
1. AI and world models could change how machines reason about the physical world
What is developing
Many AI systems are strongest when working with patterns in their training data. World models aim to represent how physical environments work by combining information from different sources, so a system can reason about situations it has not directly encountered. The WEF’s 2026 emerging-technologies digest names world models as an emerging technology and points to deployments including NVIDIA’s Cosmos platform and Stanford research applying world-model approaches to climate simulation.
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Where disruption could show up
If these models become sufficiently dependable, they could help machines plan or test actions in complex environments and help researchers simulate systems that are difficult to study directly. AI is also being used in research workflows: the WEF’s 2026 report describes applications including evaluating drug candidates, identifying tumour mutations, and mapping biological pathways. In those settings, AI could change the speed, cost, or reach of discovery work.
What remains uncertain
These examples do not establish that AI can act reliably and autonomously in every unfamiliar situation, or that it can replace experiments, expert review, or clinical validation. As AI enters consequential settings, accountability, auditing, and testing the assumptions built into a model matter as much as its technical capability. The benefits will also depend on whether institutions can integrate the systems responsibly and whether access is broad enough to avoid concentrating gains.
2. Biotechnology could make production more precise and medicine more personal
Precision fermentation may shift where some ingredients are made
Precision fermentation uses microorganisms to produce selected ingredients or materials. The WEF describes its potential to make high-value proteins such as whey or egg white. Because production depends on controlled biological processes rather than the same conditions as conventional agriculture, it could eventually take place closer to users or markets.
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Personalized mRNA cancer vaccines are promising, not guaranteed treatments
The WEF’s 2026 report also includes personalized mRNA cancer vaccines designed around mutations in an individual patient’s tumour. This approach could support treatments tailored to a person’s cancer rather than relying only on a one-size-fits-all intervention.
Individualized therapies raise a distinctive evaluation challenge: safety and effectiveness frameworks must work for treatments designed for one person or a small number of patients. The technology should therefore be understood as developing. Its inclusion in an emerging-technologies report is not proof of guaranteed prevention, regulatory approval, or access for patients.
3. Quantum technologies may reshape computing and security on different timelines
Quantum computing has long-term potential, but major hurdles remain
Quantum computers may eventually contribute to optimization, cryptography, and simulation problems, including work on chemistry and materials. But the WEF’s 2026 risk chapter says quantum systems need further refinement, better noise management, and scaling before major opportunities and risks materialize. That makes broad claims of near-term commercial superiority over classical computers premature.
Post-quantum security is a nearer-term transition
The defensive side has a more immediate task. Lattice-based cryptography is designed to protect information against attacks by classical computers and future quantum computers. The WEF digest reports that the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology finalized post-quantum encryption standards in 2024 and identifies migration of critical systems as a challenge.
Preparing systems for those standards is not the same as predicting when a quantum computer capable of breaking widely used cryptography will exist. Organizations must plan for a security transition while the timeline for such a machine remains uncertain.
4. Next-generation energy systems could make more devices grid participants
From one-way consumption to flexible exchange
In an “everything-to-grid” model, buildings, vehicles, factories, and data centres can both use electricity and return stored power to the grid when needed. Batteries, coordination software, and arrangements that compensate owners are all part of making this work at scale, according to the WEF’s emerging-technologies digest.
Why integration will determine the outcome
Coordinated storage could make it easier to use distributed energy resources and renewable generation flexibly. But devices must be able to communicate and work together; grid infrastructure and rules must support two-way flows; and owners need a reason to participate. Distributed energy could loosen the link between energy production and centralized infrastructure, but it is not a promise that local generation will replace existing grids.
5. Advanced materials could reduce cooling demand and change resource supply chains
Radiative cooling materials could help manage heat
Passive radiative cooling materials can reflect sunlight and emit heat through the atmospheric window, potentially cooling surfaces without electricity. The WEF describes possible uses in paints, films, roof tiles, and fabrics. If deployed effectively, these materials could reduce cooling energy demand and contribute to heat resilience.
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Adoption depends on practical proof and integration: standard testing, inclusion in building-rating systems, and sustained regulatory momentum in high-heat regions. The reviewed WEF material does not establish a general energy-savings figure, so any specific percentage would overstate what is known here.
Direct lithium extraction could alter how some brines are processed
Direct lithium extraction may recover lithium from brines more quickly and with less land and water use than conventional evaporation ponds. The WEF reports early industrial operations in Argentina and California. Its longer-term importance will depend in part on whether integrated extraction and refining hubs emerge; early operations alone do not establish that the approach will dominate lithium production.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Which technologies are already being used, and what is still emerging?
The examples cited by the WEF span different stages rather than a single readiness level. Its digest points to world-model deployments and research uses of AI, early industrial direct lithium extraction operations, and work on precision fermentation. It also identifies technologies such as personalized mRNA cancer vaccines and radiative cooling materials as emerging opportunities whose broader uptake depends on evaluation, infrastructure, standards, and integration. “Approaching real-world impact” should not be read as “already widely adopted.”
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Quantum computing is a particular case where long-term potential should be separated from current readiness: refinement, noise management, and scaling remain outstanding. By contrast, post-quantum security standards are already a practical basis for a migration effort, even though the timeline for a cryptographically relevant quantum computer is uncertain.
How to judge which forecasts are likely to matter
Rather than treating the five areas as a ranked prediction, assess each technology against the conditions that determine whether it can move beyond promising demonstrations:
- Evidence of use: Is there a deployment or industrial operation, or mainly a research-stage possibility?
- Scaling requirements: What facilities, trained workers, energy, materials, or grid changes would wider use require?
- The bottleneck it changes: Does it alter a research workflow, manufacturing process, health-care option, security practice, or infrastructure constraint?
- Safety and governance: Are testing, accountability, regulation, and security keeping pace with capability?
- Access and transition costs: Who can use the technology, who benefits, and who bears the cost of changing existing systems?
These are useful comparison questions, not a published scoring system. The WEF’s 2026 outlook also highlights public trust, unequal access, governance, and integration as issues that can shape whether technical promise turns into broad benefit.
One WEF statistic illustrates why risk rankings should not be confused with disruption forecasts: its 2026 Global Risks Perception Survey, discussing the 2025–2026 survey, ranks adverse outcomes of AI technologies 30th in its two-year outlook and 5th over its ten-year horizon. Those are rankings of perceived global risk—not probabilities that AI will disrupt society, nor measures of adoption. The WEF sources do not provide a comparable ranking or a single numerical estimate of the combined impact of these five areas.
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