Australia’s tech leaders believe businesses have a significant opportunity in 2025 to harness artificial intelligence to improve efficiency, new research from the Tech Council of Australia and Datacom reveals.
The 2025 Australian Tech Leaders Survey, released today, identified AI as the leading tech trend in the coming year. One-third of survey respondents said AI presented the greatest opportunity to businesses.
“It is a significant marker of where we are in our AI journey that Australian businesses expect that in 2025, the greatest opportunities will come from using technologies, like AI and automation, to drive operational efficiencies,” said Datacom Australia MD Laura Malcolm.
“The responsible deployment of generative AI tools and solutions has the ability to enable productivity gains and create space for our teams to focus on the more fulfilling aspects of their work.”
Tech Council CEO Damian Kassabgi said the annual joint survey provided a platform for industry leaders to provide insights, drawing on their experiences growing companies that disrupt existing ways of working and driving technological change.
“While 2024 was a big growth year for AI, there is huge potential for businesses to further embrace AI to work smarter and boost productivity,” said Kassabgi. “AI is transforming how businesses are run, and these gains aren’t limited to the tech industry; increasing AI and tech adoption will deliver benefits across the economy. AI has the potential to create 200,000 jobs and AUD115 billion in economic value by 2030, which will be critical to turning around Australia’s declining productivity.”
The report also revealed tech leaders are deeply concerned about the state of the economy. More than 90% of respondents feel Australia’s declining productivity isn’t being adequately addressed and 39% identified economic uncertainty as the top threat to tech companies in 2025.
“There is a strong consensus that as a country we are not doing enough to tackle our productivity challenges and that greater tech investment, tech adoption and skills training would help to reverse our falling productivity,” said Malcolm.
Key insights from the 2025 Tech Leaders Survey include:
-
The defining tech trends of 2025 are artificial intelligence (67%), cybersecurity (17%), and sustainability and circular technologies (7%);
-
Business priorities have shifted to efficiency and growth from sourcing talent for ‘hard-to-fill jobs’ and improving employee value proposition;
-
93% of respondents said Australia is not doing enough to tackle the macroeconomic productivity challenge;
-
The need for trained workers has increased: 16% of respondents felt addressing the local skills shortage through programs would be key, up from 11% in 2024;
-
85% of tech leaders stated their company has an ESG strategy in place but nearly 40% of respondents feel that cost pressures affect the likelihood of their company reaching their ESG or impact goals; and
-
Economic uncertainty was identified as the top threat to their organisation as a whole (39%), followed by a lack of skills within teams (32%).
You can read the full report here.
