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The 6 next big things in computing, chips, and foundational technology for 2026
Business & Technology
Fast Company TechnologyEN
October 6, 2026

The 6 next big things in computing, chips, and foundational technology for 2026

Advances in computing aren’t just about faster processors. As these innovations show, progress is driven by everything from the technologies used to transmit data to the systems that ensure data centers get reliable power without overwhelming the grid. If many of them are largely invisible to most of us—well, that’s kind of the point. AmazonFor skating where the AI puck is going Announced at AWS re:Invent in December 2025, Trainium3 is Amazon’s newest AI chip. It’s designed to take on not just today’s dominant AI workflows but also to anticipate the needs of emerging ones such as world models. Equipped with up to 144 chips, Amazon’s Trainium3 UltraServer quadruples the compute performance and energy efficiency of its predecessor. Uber is adopting Trainium3 for tasks such as calculating arrival times, and video-generation platform Decart has used it to achieve 4x higher frame throughput and reduce latency by 75%. CadenceFor teaching AI agents to design processors Historically, advances in processor design have been propelled by human engineering talent, a resource that’s difficult to scale. Introduced in early 2026, Chip design giant Cadence’s Super Agents take on essential elements of the process such as creating test plans, design node migration, and digital implementation. Already adopted by big names like Nvidia, Qualcomm, and Altera, they offer up to 10x productivity increases across design and verification, according to Cadence. HPFor building a workstation today for tomorrow’s GPUsOut of the box, HP’s Z8 Fury G6i desktop workstation can support for up to four powerful Nvidia RTX Pro 6000 GPUs. But the company also looked ahead to future GPUs. The workstation’s optional Max Side Panel expands its case by 1.4 inches and adds cooling fans, allowing tool-free expansion to accommodate larger, hotter GPUs that require more power and would otherwise require the purchase of a new workstation. HP uses recycled plastic, steel, and rare earth materials to build the Z8 Fury G6i and put it through 360,000 hours of reliability testing. MarvellFor harnessing light to move AI dataNo matter how fast an AI system’s GPUs are, it may be held back by the electrical interconnects and copper pathways used to shuttle data in and out. Marvell’s Phototonic Fabric platform replaces them with light-based transport, allowing the same energy footprint to deliver up to three times the performance. The company gained the technology as part of its $3.25 billion acquisition of Celestial AI, announced in December 2025, and has since been engineering products that will support it both as an upgrade to existing AI systems and as a core element of future ones. ON.energyFor giving AI the uninterruptible power it needsAI data centers don’t just draw vast amounts of power—they do it in oscillating bursts that stress the electrical grid and cause problems for everyone else on it. After developing an uninterruptible power supply for a Mexico City bakery prone to blackouts, ON.energy realized that its design was also applicable to AI. That led to the AI UPS. In tests at the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Laboratory of the Rockies, it prevented load swings from 30% to 100%, in intervals as fleeting as 10 milliseconds, from impacting the grid. Silicon Quantum ComputingFor pioneering quantum-enhanced AIIn October 2025, Australia’s Silicon Quantum Computing launched a quantum-enhanced machine learning system called Watermelon. The first commercially available quantum reservoir computer, it uses quantum technology to spot patterns in datasets that can’t be identified by classical computers. The technology requires the placement of phosphorous atoms in silicon with 0.13 nanometer accuracy and has been validated by partnerships with Telstra, Nvidia, and the Australian Department of Defense. The companies and individuals behind these technologies are among the honorees in Fast Company’s Next Big Things in Tech awards for 2026. Read more about the winners across all categories and the methodology behind the selection process.

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Curated from Fast Company Technology. Classified as Business & Technology by AI, which sometimes makes mistakes.

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