Unprecedented - Bond's Mary Meeker 2025 AI Trends Report

If you’re trying to make sense of the dizzying pace of change in artificial intelligence, Mary Meeker’s latest report, Trends — Artificial Intelligence, is a great place to start. At over 300 pages, it’s dense, data-driven, and surprisingly accessible (lots and lots of graphs). It gives executives, investors, and even curious technophiles a comprehensive look at what’s happening in AI which if I had to sum the report to a single word it would be "unprecedented".

Three key themes from the report stood out to me:

1. Unprecedented growth and adoption:The report makes one thing abundantly clear — we’ve never seen anything scale like this. Not the internet, not mobile, not cloud. AI is being adopted at a breakneck pace. Usage of tools like ChatGPT exploded to hundreds of millions of users in under two years. This adoption isn’t just consumer curiosity; businesses are also embedding AI into critical workflows faster than they did with prior technology waves. Companies and executives that don’t adapt risk irrelevance.

2. Massive capital expenditure: Another standout finding is the sheer amount of money being poured into AI infrastructure. Meeker details how capex on data centers, specialized chips, and other AI compute is growing at rates between 21% and 60% year-over-year. This is more than just an arms race among Big Tech — it’s a foundation being laid for the next generation of digital services (take a look at Hyperscaler CoreWeave Nasdaq: CRWV - 300% stock rise in just 3 months). For CFOs and strategists, it signals that building or buying access to these resources will be table stakes for staying competitive.

3. Labor market transformation:Perhaps the most profound shift is in the workforce. AI-related job postings are up nearly 450% since 2018, while traditional tech postings are flat (In Q2 2025 nearly half of all VC money flowed to AI companies). That’s a massive reallocation of talent. More subtly, the nature of work is changing — humans are increasingly managing AI agents that handle repetitive or complex tasks.

Mary Meeker’s research isn’t just a snapshot of AI trends; it’s a roadmap for how technology, capital, and labor are converging to reshape industries. Anyone serious about understanding the future of business should spend time with this report. It’s an essential tool to see where we’re headed — and where the opportunities (and risks) lie.

My take: I recommend at least browsing through this report in order to understand the magnitude of what's going on with AI. The pace is so fast that the report will probably look quaint in a couple of months. Bottom line is that there's a massive market shift towards AI. This market shift will divert significant portions of the world's R&D & infrastructure investments and will grab management attention in practically every field. As with most things in life: Luck favors the prepared!