Just some thoughts on the 2025 AI and tech market

I put a 2025 tech market recap stream on. This is not a full summary. Just three bits that stuck after I watched it back.

The AI race leveled out

For a while it felt like OpenAI would eat the world and everyone else was catching up. Sitting with the year as a builder, that story got weaker. Claude, Gemini, and ChatGPT are all ordinary options when you ship a product. Picking a model feels less like betting on a monopoly and more like picking a tool for the job.

Loud markets, quiet ones

All year, crypto made a lot of noise on Twitter. In the numbers the stream used at year end, Bitcoin was down a bit. Gold was up about 70%. Same calendar, two very different sound levels. The loud feed was a bad guide to which line moved.

The energy part

The energy talk was the heavy bit for me. AI data centers are pulling enough electricity that companies are talking about putting small modular reactors (SMRs) next to the servers, so local grids do not take the hit alone. Model leaderboards get the headlines. The power bill is the constraint that does not care about the leaderboard.

Related: WTF is RAG anyway?