DALIAN, June 23 (Xinhua) — After years of software-first artificial intelligence (AI) development, the technologies with huge impact are moving off screens and into the physical systems that underpin modern economies — energy, medicine, food and materials, according to a report released on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The report, titled “Top 10 Emerging Technologies of 2026,” was unveiled during the 2026 Summer Davos forum in northeast China’s Dalian City.<\/p>\n
Co-published by the World Economic Forum and research publisher Frontiers, the report identifies key technologies most likely to shape industry, policy and society over the next five years.<\/p>\n
These technologies range from next-generation clean energy, advanced materials and biotechnology to AI and quantum technologies.<\/p>\n
The top ten emerging technologies are:<\/p>\n
— Everything-to-grid energy, enabling electric vehicles and buildings to store electricity and feed it back to the grid on demand.<\/p>\n
— Direct lithium extraction, replacing slow evaporation ponds with engineered systems that pull battery-grade lithium from salt flats in hours.<\/p>\n
— Passive radiative cooling materials, keeping buildings cool without consuming any power.<\/p>\n
— PFAS destruction, breaking down “forever chemicals” into harmless, natural substances for clean drinking water.<\/p>\n
— Precision fermentation, brewing food ingredients and medicines.<\/p>\n
— Exosome drug delivery, using the human body’s natural cellular packages to deliver targeted medicines precisely to diseased cells.<\/p>\n
— Personalized mRNA cancer vaccines, training a patient’s immune system to find and destroy cancer cells.<\/p>\n
— Quantum simulation for drug discovery.<\/p>\n
— World models, predicting real-world scenarios.<\/p>\n
— Lattice-based cryptography, designed to protect sensitive digital data from being hacked by future quantum computers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
DALIAN, June 23 (Xinhua) — After years of software-first artificial intelligence (AI) development, the technologies with huge impact are moving off screens and into the physical systems that underpin modern economies — energy, medicine, food and materials, according to a report released on Tuesday. The report, titled “Top 10 Emerging Technologies of 2026,” was unveiled […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":75805,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[279],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[94],"class_list":["post-75804","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science-technology"],"yoast_head":"\n