McKinsey: five compute and connectivity frontiers underpinning the next wave of AI

By McKinsey & Company.

This McKinsey & Company email promotes its annual "McKinsey Technology Trends Outlook" report, written by Michael Chui, Roger Roberts and Tanguy Catlin, which this year examines 14 technology trends relevant to business leaders, along with the forces shaping their development and adoption. The email focuses specifically on five of those 14 trends, grouped under the heading "five frontiers of compute and connectivity" and presented as the infrastructure on which AI and other emerging technologies are built and deployed.

The first trend is application-specific semiconductors: custom-designed chips optimized for specialized computing workloads. According to the email, in the case of artificial intelligence these chips are increasingly designed in close coordination with software systems, memory architectures, network infrastructure and data center operating models to meet the requirements of large-scale AI deployment. The email includes a quote from associate partner Yvonne Ferrier, who says that "the competitive frontier in AI infrastructure is shifting from chips to full-system performance." Ferrier adds that, for hyperscalers, custom accelerators are no longer just a source of cost and performance advantage but are becoming the foundation of differentiated cloud platforms, so the value goes to those able to co-design silicon, systems, software and services in an integrated way.

The second trend is cybersecurity and trustworthy systems, which McKinsey describes as technologies that help protect computer networks, make digital interactions more verifiable in interconnected environments and strengthen trust in digital systems. The email says these cybersecurity systems are increasingly AI-enabled and include zero-trust architectures and identity and access management, along with other trust-enhancing technologies such as blockchain-based record systems, tokenization platforms and quantum-safe cryptography.

The third trend is advanced connectivity, which covers the technologies that move data between people, devices and systems: 5G and emerging 6G, Wi-Fi 6 and 7, low-power IoT networks, fiber and optical transport, low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites, direct-to-device services, and software-defined, AI-managed networks.

The fourth trend is immersive-reality technologies, which blend digital experiences with the physical world: augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), mixed reality (MR), haptics and AI-powered smart glasses. According to the email, this category is evolving beyond headset-centered immersion toward context-aware wearable devices that help people see, hear and interact with their surroundings in new ways.

The fifth trend is quantum technologies, which harness quantum mechanics to unlock new capabilities in computing, communication and sensing. The category includes quantum computers for selected problems such as simulation and optimization, quantum-safe security against future encryption risks, and quantum sensors for high-precision measurement of physical signals.

Beyond these five trends, the email includes a promotional link to another McKinsey piece titled "What is the state of AI in 2026?", which according to the text explores recent research on coding agents and other agentic AI tools, investment and costs, workforce implications, and the practices that can help turn AI momentum into lasting business value. The email notes that the companies getting the most out of AI ("AI high performers") stand out for how they put it into practice and how they translate adoption into measurable impact.

The email is promotional, corporate-newsletter content and does not include specific figures, client cases or quantitative data in the body of the message itself; it simply describes the trend categories and links to longer content (the full 14-trend report and the state of AI in 2026 report). This summary therefore sticks strictly to the descriptions and the direct quote included in the email, without adding figures or details from the full report that do not appear in the email.