Everyone likes to think they know where the "next big thing" is coming from. If you ask a random VC in a Sand Hill Road coffee shop, they’ll probably bark "Agentic AI" before you even finish your sentence. But sitting in the thin air of Park City for Fortune Brainstorm Tech 2025, you quickly realize that the real story isn't just about smarter chatbots.
It's actually much messier than that.
The summit, held from September 8 to 10 at the Montage Deer Valley, felt different this year. There was less of that wide-eyed "crypto-will-save-the-world" energy from five years ago. Instead, it was replaced by a sort of gritty, pragmatic focus on how to actually make this stuff work without breaking society—or the bank. OpenAI’s Chief Revenue Officer Ashley Kramer was there. So was Matthew Prince from Cloudflare and David Risher from Lyft.
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They weren't just talking about code. They were talking about survival.
The Reality Check at Fortune Brainstorm Tech 2025
One of the biggest misconceptions people have about these high-level summits is that they’re just echo chambers for the elite. Honestly, that’s only half true. While the $9,500 ticket price definitely keeps the riff-raff out, the actual conversations on stage were surprisingly blunt about the "AI hangover."
Take the session on "Agentic AI." Everyone’s obsessed with the idea of AI agents that can book your flights and manage your inbox. But at Fortune Brainstorm Tech 2025, the talk shifted toward the "unseen" infrastructure. If we want these agents to run, we need a massive reorganization of global supply chains and a terrifying amount of electricity.
"The most important thing in any industry is to be a lifelong learner," Mary C. Daly, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, noted during a session. "Tech lives because it never stays static."
Basically, if you aren't ready to throw out your 2024 playbook, you're already behind.
Why the "Human Element" Isn't Just Marketing Fluff
It sounds kinda cliché, right? "Focus on the humans." But Mauro Porcini, the Chief Design Officer at Samsung, actually put a formula to it that stuck with a lot of people: $AI \times (EI + HI)$.
The idea is that Artificial Intelligence is a multiplier, but it’s worthless if you don't have Emotional Intelligence ($EI$) and Human Imagination ($HI$) at the core. If you just let the AI run your brand, you end up with a soul-less, "beige" company that nobody cares about. We saw this theme pop up in discussions about everything from healthcare wearables to the future of chess.
Speaking of chess, seeing NFL legend Larry Fitzgerald Jr. on stage with Danny Rensch from Chess.com was a trip. They weren't just nerding out over grandmaster moves. They were dissecting how AI has fundamentally changed the value of human strategic thinking. When a machine can beat anyone, why do we still play? Because the struggle is the point.
Where the Money is Actually Moving
Venture capital is in a weird spot. David Krane from GV (Google Ventures) didn't sugarcoat it. The "spray and pray" days of 2021 are dead and buried. Now, investors are looking for "living intelligence"—systems that don't just process data but actually sense and adapt to the physical world.
Think less about a better LLM and more about:
- Aerospace and Defense: Deeply uncool five years ago, now it’s the hottest sector at the Montage.
- Climate Innovation: Not just "carbon offsets," but hard tech for utilities.
- Fintech's Third Act: Moving past the "crypto bro" era into actual regulated digital finance.
The gap between the "leaders" and "laggards" is widening fast. It’s not happening over decades anymore. It’s happening over months. If your company is still in the "experimenting with ChatGPT" phase while your competitor is deploying agentic workflows in their factories, you’re basically a horse-and-buggy company in 1910.
The Cybersecurity Elephant in the Room
We have to talk about the "dark side" for a second. Fortune Brainstorm Tech 2025 spent a lot of time on the looming "Quantum Leap." Quantum computing is moving out of the lab and into the enterprise, which is cool for drug discovery but terrifying for encryption.
Cloudflare's Matthew Prince and the team at Varonis were essentially sounding the alarm on "harvest now, decrypt later" attacks. Hackers are stealing encrypted data today, betting on the fact that they can crack it in three years with a quantum processor. It’s a silent crisis that most mid-sized businesses aren't even thinking about yet.
Making Sense of the Chaos
So, what does this actually mean for you? If you’re a founder, a leader, or just someone trying to keep your job in 2026, here’s the deal.
Innovation is decoupling from Silicon Valley. We’re seeing massive tech hubs rise in places like Singapore and Ireland (both of which had a heavy presence at the summit). You don't have to be in Palo Alto to build a world-class AI company anymore. In fact, being away from the "hype bubble" might actually be an advantage.
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The sessions on "Innovation Without Borders" highlighted that the next wave of tech will be adapted to local contexts. A robot that works in a San Francisco warehouse might fail miserably on a factory floor in Ohio or a farm in Brazil.
Actionable Steps for the "Next Now"
Stop looking for the "ultimate" AI tool. It doesn't exist. Instead, focus on these three things that the experts at Park City emphasized:
- Audit Your "Agent Readiness": Do your current software systems have APIs that an AI agent can actually talk to? If your data is trapped in 20-year-old silos, you're invisible to the next generation of automation.
- Invest in "Human-Centered" Skills: Double down on things machines can't do well: high-stakes negotiation, complex empathy, and cross-disciplinary storytelling.
- Secure Your Perimeter for the Quantum Era: Start asking your IT team about "post-quantum cryptography." It sounds like sci-fi, but the transition needs to happen now.
The world is transforming fast. Business models are breaking. But as the 2025 summit proved, the goal isn't just to keep up—it's to figure out what remains "unquestionably human" in a world that's increasingly digital.
Success in this era isn't about having the best algorithms. It's about having the best judgment. Use the tech to do the heavy lifting, but keep your hands on the steering wheel. That’s the only way to navigate the "limitless intelligence" of the next decade without losing your way.