2025 was the year technology stopped being tomorrow’s promise and became today’s anchor. What began as a surge in generative AI and platform innovation two years prior crystallized this year into concrete shifts in how people work, governing bodies legislate, and markets invest. Across continents and industries, the arc of technology bent toward practical impact, regulatory reality, and economic weight! At the heart of the year’s story was artificial intelligence’s jump from novelty to infrastructure. LLMs and multimodal models moved beyond demos into everyday workflows, influencing how documents are written, campaigns are conceived, products designed, and code generated. Enterprises that…

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My name is Alexandru Stan, and this article continues the dialogue I began following the acquisition of TNW. Following the recent transaction, TNW Spaces remains with the Financial Times, while we continue the mission of the website, the events, and the global community. We already have a dedicated team at tekpon operating the platform, events, and community initiatives. Our objective is to expand and strengthen the team as TNW accelerates its next chapter. TNW is already a global media platform with millions of readers. We’re not starting over. We are building forward. Why TNW matters today Technology is entering a…

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Most engineering leaders cannot answer the one question their CFO is about to ask: “Can you prove this AI spend is changing outcomes, not just activity?” Every December, roadmaps get locked, budgets get approved, and board decks are polished until everything looks precise and under control. Underneath, many CTOs and VPs are still working with partial visibility. They have a feel for their teams, but not a reliable view of how work moves through the system, how AI is really changing delivery, or where time and money actually go. For a while, that was survivable. Experience, pattern recognition, and cheap…

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Not long ago, like many of you, I read what I feared might be The Next Web’s final article. In late September, TNW’s co-founder announced that the tech conference and news site would be winding down, no more events, no new stories. It felt like the end of an era; the news hit hard! Yet, just a few weeks ago, a twist arrived: the tech platform Tekpon acquired 100% of TNW’s media and events brand from the Financial Times, ensuring that this nearly two-decade legacy will continue to thrive. While, myself, trying to read people’s opinions on this topic, I…

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When OpenAI announced its new shopping search capabilities, I took the news with a grain of salt (perhaps the whole shaker). For the past decade, we have watched the slow evolution of traditional search engines. What began as tools for pure information discovery gradually morphed into ecosystems dominated by SEO-optimized content and sponsored results. My initial fear with ChatGPT’s update was simple: Are we seeing the beginning of a similar shift? Is the purity of the “reasoning engine” being diluted by the necessity of commerce? After testing the new shopping integration, the results suggest that we are at a pivotal…

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