The World Economic Forum and scientific publisher Frontiers have released the Top 10 Emerging Technologies of 2026 report, with a clear message: competitive advantage is moving from screens and software into the physical systems that power modern economies.
Eight of the ten listed technologies act directly on physical infrastructure — energy grids, water supplies, factories, drug pipelines, and food production. The report, unveiled at the Summer Davos Forum in Tianjin, marks a departure from years of software-first innovation.
The Top 10 Emerging Technologies of 2026:
1. Everything-to-grid energy — Electric vehicles and smart buildings store and return energy to the grid on demand, enabling two-way power flow at scale. This turns millions of batteries into a distributed virtual power plant.
2. Direct lithium extraction — Replaces slow evaporation ponds (which take months) with engineered systems that pull battery-grade lithium from salt flats in hours. This could break the supply bottleneck holding back the electric vehicle transition.
3. Passive radiative cooling materials — Special surfaces that reflect heat directly into space without consuming any power, keeping buildings cool even under direct sunlight. A passive solution to rising cooling demand.
4. PFAS destruction — Technologies that break down "forever chemicals" (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) into harmless natural substances, addressing widespread groundwater contamination.
5. Precision fermentation — Brewing food ingredients, proteins, and medicines using genetically programmed microbes, electricity, and sugar in fermentation tanks — decoupling production from climate and geography.
6. Exosome drug delivery — Using the body's natural nanoscale cellular packages (exosomes) to deliver drugs precisely to diseased cells, potentially reducing side effects compared to synthetic nanoparticles.
7. Personalized mRNA cancer vaccines — Vaccines tailored to a patient's specific tumor mutations that train the immune system to find and destroy cancer cells. Building on the mRNA platform proven during the COVID-19 pandemic.
8. Quantum simulation for drug discovery — Simulating molecular interactions at the quantum level to identify promising drug candidates faster and cheaper than traditional screening methods.
9. World models — AI systems that learn how the physical world behaves from multimodal data (video, sensor readings, text) and can predict the outcomes of complex scenarios like superstorms or traffic disruptions.
10. Lattice-based cryptography — Next-generation encryption designed to resist attacks from future quantum computers, protecting sensitive data, financial transactions, and digital infrastructure.
Several technologies on the list break the link between geography and production — direct lithium extraction works in new locations, precision fermentation can produce food anywhere, and everything-to-grid energy turns every building into a power asset.
The report used an AI-based nomination workflow developed by Frontiers, which systematically screened over 1,200 candidate technologies from academic publications and industry sources, with cross-model validation. An expert Advisory Council provided final review.
Stephan Mergenthaler, Managing Director of the World Economic Forum, said the technologies "could challenge long-held assumptions about how we use technology to address some of the world's most pressing challenges such as food insecurity, climate change, and untreatable diseases."
Frontiers CEO Editor Frederick Fenter noted the "decisive shift" toward physical systems, even as AI continues to support progress across many fronts.
