The 2025 tech glossary: Ideas, innovations, and the vocabulary they created

As 2025 comes to a close, it’s worth looking back at the technologies and ideas that defined this especially high-octane year in tech. One way to capture the moment is through the vocabulary it produced. This glossary highlights the tech terms that dominated conversations in 2025, which are expressions that not only steered the industry but also seeped into mainstream vocabulary.

Agentic AI: If generative AI dominated the conversation in 2024, agentic AI emerged as the defined 2025. It is an artificial intelligence system that is capable of autonomous action and decision-making. In this technology, ‘agents’ are designed to perceive their environment, reason about their actions, and learn from experiences. These AI agents collaborate in real-time to automate complex tasks and enhance decision-making.

Agentic AI security: As helpful as Agentic AI is, it also brings itself a slew of security challenges. This gave rise to a new type of technique called Agentic AI security. It refers to securing autonomous AI systems that plan and act independently. Unlike traditional AI or traditional software, Agentic AI Security focuses on securing the reasoning process and the autonomous actions of these agents. It also moves beyond basic LLM safety to focus on authoriSation, tool use, and preventing chained vulnerabilities in multi-step tasks.

Shadow AI: Shadow AI describes the growing phenomenon of employees using unapproved AI tools or models—often for productivity gains—outside official enterprise policies. In 2025, it became a major governance concern as agentic systems became more capable and harder to track.

Vibe hacking: Vibe hacking is a term that describes the misuse of LLMs and other generative AI tools to conduct or scale sophisticated cybercrime and malicious operations. It is a spin on an equally new technique of vibe coding where user can write a piece of software with the help of advanced AI without deep technical understanding. Vibe hacking weaponizes generative AI to create a highly customized digital attacks.

GEO: Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is the process of optimizing content for AI-based search engines and platforms. It is different from traditional Search Engine Optimization (SEO), which focuses on ranking in a list of links by relying on keywords, backlinks, and technical factors. GEO, on the other hand, focuses on how AI models process and use information to provide direct answers.  GEO's goal is to have the content directly be cited within an AI-generated response.

Sovereign cloud: As enterprises embraced agentic AI, concerns around data residency, compliance, and national control intensified—placing sovereign cloud squarely on the 2025 agenda. A Sovereign Cloud is a cloud computing environment designed to meet the stringent data protection and governance requirements of a specific country or region. 

Aisle containment: With sovereign cloud emphasising control and compliance, attention also shifted to the physical backbone of these systems, that are the data centres and innovations like aisle containment. Aisle containment is a strategy used in data centers to improve the efficiency of cooling systems by separating the hot and cold airflows. Without containment, the hot and cold air can mix, which reduces the efficiency of the cooling system. This forces the cooling units to work harder, consume more energy, and can lead to hot spots in the data center where equipment is at risk of overheating. Aisle containment creates a physical barrier to prevent this mixing.

Subsea cables: Subsea cables are the fundamental, physical infrastructure that forms the backbone of the global internet and international telecommunications. They are fibre optics cables laid on the seabed across oceans and seas to carry vast amounts of data between continents. These cables enable modern communication by transmitting data at high speed for activities like phone calls, email, and streaming.

Neocloud: Neoclouds are cloud providers that primarily offer GPU-as-a-Service (GPUaaS). These companies are distinct from traditional hyperscale cloud providers (like AWS, Azure, Google Cloud) in their approach; unlike general-purpose cloud providers that offer a wide range of services, Neoclouds’ data centers, networking, and software stacks are specifically designed for demanding AI/ML, deep learning, and high-performance computing (HPC) tasks. 

Consent management: As the Ministry of Electronics and IT released the DPDPA 2025 Rules this year, personal data usage consent also gained prominence. Related to this, Consent management is the process of obtaining users’ permissions for how their personal data is collected, used, and shared. It uses systems to inform users, collect their consent, and allow them to manage their preferences. It also involves maintaining records of consent for compliance with privacy regulations.

Device binding: In late November 2025, India’s Department of Telecommunications (DoT) issued a major directive under the Telecommunications Amendment Rules, 2025, requiring major messaging and OTT communication services to implement continuous SIM-to-device binding. Device binding is a security mechanism that creates a unique and secure association between a user's account or application and a specific device. It links a user's digital identity to the device they are using, ensuring that only that authorized device can access sensitive data or perform certain transactions. 

Further, SIM binding is a mechanism that links a user's digital identity or application account to the unique physical identifier of the SIM card installed in their mobile device. It is a form of device binding that uses the SIM card as a non-replicable hardware token for authentication. 

Quantum economy: Quantum economy denotes a quantum technologies-driven emerging economic ecosystem. These technologies, including quantum computing, communication, sensing, and materials, are expected to impact various sectors like drug discovery and finance. The rise of the quantum economy would result in high demand for a new, specialized workforce, including quantum physicists, engineers, and data scientists.

Digital arrest: A digital arrest scam is a cybercrime where scammers pretend to be legal authorities. In this scam, fraudsters often threaten victims with arrest or legal action unless they pay a certain amount of money. They may use spoofed phone numbers, fake websites, or even deepfake technology to appear legitimate. These scams can be very convincing and have resulted in significant financial losses for many people.