What's Next, Now: August 2025
This month, our crystal ball predicts the rise of the hard tech era, AI-powered pricing pressures, competition for Vegas’s gambling crown, and more.
Think back to the early days of Google, Twitter, and Facebook, when engineers in graphic t-shirts lounged on colorful beanbag chairs, fueled by free office coffee and dreams of coding the next big thing. Now, picture today’s techie: They have an elaborate early morning routine, embrace the hustle-culture mindset, and work out of an office fit for productivity, not play.
Analysts say we’ve entered a new era. Instead of SaaS and social, today’s tech firms are doubling down on the physical side of innovation, like semiconductors, GPUs, quantum processors, and the infrastructure needed to run data-hungry AI models. Experts call this “hard tech” — technology you can touch, not just tap.
What does the hard tech era mean? It’s not just about going from beanbags to standing desks. The business of tech is transforming, with AI’s relentless focus on efficiency leading to mass layoffs and changing expectations around perks, compensation, and culture. And the companies making real money look different, too. Take NVIDIA, for example. Just last month, the chipmaker leapt over Microsoft and Apple as the most valuable company in the world (if only for a brief amount of time). As the tides continue to turn, a new crop of top tech firms may start to appear.
One interesting thing coming out of the hard tech shift? The rise of new “Silicon Valleys.” The Quantum Prairie, centered in Chicago and the Midwest, is emerging as a hub for quantum innovation, with as much as $9 billion being invested in Chicago’s South Side to build a quantum computing campus. The Battery Belt now stretches across the Southeast as the booming EV and grid storage industries fuel a surge in battery manufacturing. We’ve got our eyes out for where the next hard tech hotspot will appear.
At one time, making it onto a late-night talk show was an "I made it" moment. Trading quips with Conan O’Brien or Jimmy Kimmel signaled cultural relevance and mass appeal. But over the years, late-night TV habits have turned into late-night TikTok scrolling, and these legacy formats are now struggling to keep up.
Late-night shows have shed 90% of their audiences over the past several decades, and some programs are disappearing off the air altogether. James Corden’s The Late Late Show ended in 2023, The Daily Show has been without a permanent host since 2022, and last month CBS controversially cancelled The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. While interview bits and performance clips from these shows still make their way to short-form platforms, a rising crop of social-native creators now holds the press tour power.
Tiktok failed to load.Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser
Instead of talk show sets, promo today looks like sitting down with hosts like Alex Cooper, Sean Evans, and Jake Shane for thought-provoking and/or giggle-filled chats, or getting stopped by man-on-the-street interviewers to give a hot take or guess a musical artist. Even Taylor Swift, who has often kept her distance from mainstream media, appeared on NFL-turned-social media stars Travis and Jason Kelce’s “New Heights” podcast to announce her newest album. (Granted, she’s also dating one of the hosts.)
Looking ahead, the new media playbook involves legacy platforms partnering with rising creators. ESPN has made efforts to appeal to a younger generation by hiring content creator Katie Feeney to host sports and lifestyle content. Fox is also willing to bring in new personalities with their recent hiring of Dave Portnoy as a segment contributor.
As audience expectations around content continue to shift, brands will need to stay in tune with cultural trends and consumption habits. Creators are building loyal communities and highly engaged audiences from the ground up. For brands, the challenge will be moving quickly enough to keep up.
The airline industry is hitting fresh turbulence (and it’s not just because the window seats don't have windows). Delta Air Lines recently announced plans to use artificial intelligence to help set flight prices and personalize fares in the pursuit of higher profits. While Delta insists, “There is no fare product Delta has ever used, is testing, or plans to use that targets customers with individualized prices based on personal data,” the move has sparked consumer concerns about privacy, fairness, and potential price gouging.
And it’s not just airlines. Dynamic pricing — where costs shift in real time based on demand — is spreading across industries. In Norway, grocery store prices can change up to 100 times a day, spiking even more during the holidays. Experts say it’s only a matter of time before U.S. shoppers see the same trend in their local supermarkets. While electronic shelf labels already exist in many American stores, lawmakers and consumers are worried they could pave the way for sudden price hikes during peak hours or weather emergencies, or eventually, based on the customers themselves.
Consumers’ money stresses are mounting. Inflation, tariffs, and uncertainty about the future are top concerns, driving Americans to tighten their budgets. People are getting thrifty by stretching pantry staples, buying in bulk for value, or downsizing to smaller packs to limit spending. And with the average American spending nearly four hours a day thinking about their finances — the equivalent of a part-time job — it’s clear that financial stress is reshaping buying habits, making trust and transparency more important than ever.
For brands, empathy is currency. Companies that demonstrate understanding, offer real value, and create solutions that ease financial anxiety will be best positioned to earn loyalty in an era where every dollar matters.
They say, “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.” But lately, not much is happening at all.
Tourism is sliding, with visitor numbers to Sin City falling 11.3% year over year in June 2025. Air travelers are down 6.3% and car traffic at the California-Nevada border is also lagging, over the same period of time. With fewer Californians making the weekend trip, fewer bodies are filling casinos, shows, and hotels.
Why the slump? Rising resort prices, inflation, and a shaky economy are certainly part of it. But Vegas also faces a more fundamental challenge: Competition. When Nevada legalized gambling in 1931, it became the nation’s gaming capital. Today, online casinos and sports betting are accessible across the U.S. Gamblers no longer need to hop on a plane to place their bets — they can do it from their couch.
Adding to the pressure is a new federal tax law that changes how gambling income is reported. Until now, gamblers who broke even could claim zero taxable income. But under the new rule, only 90% of losses will be deductible, meaning even those who walk away without winnings could owe taxes. While small bets at the sports bar may not feel much of a hit, it could further discourage high rollers from making big plays in Vegas.
Research from the American Gaming Association shows that 55% of U.S. adults gambled in the past year, but participation doesn’t necessarily translate into packed casinos. With the digital shift, gambling is becoming less about destination experiences and more about convenience, immediacy, and personalization.
DraftKings calls it “The Gen Z Effect,” where gambling must be fast, emotionally charged, and offer the potential for an outsized payoff. Slow, traditional table games just don’t hold the same appeal. For brands across industries, the Vegas story is a cautionary tale: Continual gamification could upend long-standing models anywhere consumer attention is shifting, turning slower traditions into fast, high-stakes engagement.
Just like Uber wants to be more than just an app to call a cab and AirBnb wants to be more than just a platform to book your home away from home, banks want to be more than just banks. They kind of want to be … everything.
As the Trump administration continues to prioritize crypto-friendly regulations, banks are getting in on the action. FDIC-insured banks have struggled with strict crypto regulations that fintech companies aren’t subject to, making it hard to get a direct foothold in the ever-expanding crypto stratosphere. Now, Bank of America, Citi, and even longtime crypto-skeptic JPMorgan Chase are planning stablecoin launches, a type of cryptocurrency tied to traditional assets like the U.S. dollar to reduce volatility. Getting in on crypto could help banks close the innovation gap that’s defined the last decade of finance, putting them on more equal footing with fintechs’ tech-driven edge.
These moves also come as banks look to turn their handheld successes — the rise of mobile banking, the growth of P2P payment platforms like Zelle — into a gateway to becoming a one-stop shop. The goal is to mirror the success of Asia’s so-called super apps like WeChat and Alipay, which blend payments with shopping, social media, messaging, and everyday services into a single ecosystem that customers never want to leave. However, experts disagree on whether banks are really the companies to get there. For instance, Deloitte has instead nominated social media, ride share, and payment companies as Most Likely to Succeed.
Getting control over your data might be the first step. JPMorgan rattled fintechs when it announced it will start charging third parties for access to customer financial information in wake of potentially sweeping new open-banking rules from the CFPB. If banks win that fight, they won’t just process the payments — they’ll control the highly valuable data that results from every transaction. Pair that with a future stablecoin wallet and a super-app front end, and banks won’t be just banks anymore.
During the pandemic, homeowners took redecorating and renovation into their own hands, spurring a DIY boom. Now that we’re back in the world (and back in the office) home improvement is returning to the experts.
Businesses are facing a growing AI content problem: Is it more important to show up in AI search and optimize content for discoverability, or is it better to block bots from scraping your content to feed their always-hungry training data?
Positioning company executives as thought leaders and relatable faces-of-the-brand is a strategic imperative these days. But, it can have its consequences when their potential less-than-savory personal lives get plastered over the entire internet.
Want to hear more? Explore the Tier One blog, TOP TALK, for the latest digital marketing trends, tips, and insights.
Copyright © 2025 Tier One Partners is a women-owned full-service PR, content, and digital marketing agency. We work with innovators in B2B and B2C technology, digital healthcare, financial services, energy tech, and manufacturing to develop award-winning creative, data-driven strategies that propel them to industry leader status. From day one, we’re committed to earning our clients’ trust, sharing their vision, and embedding their purpose into everything we do. To learn more, visit wearetierone.com.