Top AI Trends 2025: Key Developments to Watch

The Largest Technology Companies By Market Cap In April 2025

Study: 42% of Parents Aren't Teaching Their Kids to Invest Long-Term

Stock Performance in Every Recession Since 1980

The State of LGBTQ Finance: A Survey of 2,000 Americans

ESG, SRI, Impact Investing: What Are They, How to Get Started, and How Funds Have Performed

State of Streaming 2024: Streaming Services and Consumer Sentiment

An Introduction to Digital Real Estate in the Metaverse

Average Net Worth by Age, Education, and Race

Study: Men Are 4x More Likely Than Women to Have Secret Crypto Accounts

Study: The Importance of Diverse Investing Role Models

Are Alternative Investments the Best Inflation Hedge? Here's the Data

The Best and Worst States to Retire to in 2025

Thinking of Changing Careers? Here's Who's Hiring Now

Tim Cook Owns Cryptocurrency -- So Do 68% of American Millionaires

How Many Americans Own Stock? About 162 Million -- but the Wealthiest 1% Own More Than Half

Here's Why 20% of Americans Have Changed Careers Since the Pandemic Began

Which Jobs Will Be Automated in the Next 10 Years?

Estate and Inheritance Taxes by State in 2024

Kevin O'Leary Is Concerned About Leaving Too Large an Inheritance -- So Are Two-Thirds of High-Net-Worth Individuals

Alternative Investments of the Ultra-Wealthy in 2024

High-Net-Worth Individuals Gave $5.8 Billion to COVID-19 Philanthropy in 2020

Crypto and Investment Scam Statistics for 2024

Study: How Gen Z and Millennial Investors Think About Risk

What Is the Average Retirement Savings in the U.S.?

Study: What Are Gen Z and Millennial Investors Buying in 2025?

Gen Z and Millennial Investors: Ranking the Most Used, Trusted Investing Tools

Capital Gains Tax: Everything You Need to Know

Poll: How Did Investors Deal With Market Volatility in 2020?

Marijuana Tax Revenue by State

Poll: How Well Did Meme Stock Investors Understand What Was Happening?

Women and Investing Statistics: What You Should Know

Study: Do Landlords Actually Know What Renters Want?

Commercial Real Estate Investing Statistics for 2024

Trends in Real Estate Investing Scams and Fraud

The House-Flipping Statistics Investors Should Know in 2025

Study: How Diverse is the Real Estate Investing Community?

REITs vs. Stocks: Everything You Need to Know

Property Taxes in Each State

Study: Most Americans Understand Investing Basics But Struggle With Some Specifics

Are Stock Splits Good? Here's the Data

Survey: 54% of Retirees View 2025 Social Security COLA as Insufficient

Elder Fraud and Financial Abuse Statistics for 2022

Which States Produce the Most Renewable Energy?

This Is the Average Income for Retirees in America

Survey: Investors Embrace Renewables, Not Ready to Let Go of Fossil Fuels

Consumer and Industry Outlooks on Electric Vehicles

Study: First-Generation Americans Face Unique Financial Obstacles

The Largest Companies by Market Cap in April 2025

What Is the Average Retirement Age in the U.S.?

Survey: Americans Are Skeptical of ChatGPT's Stock Recommendations

Student Loan Debt Statistics in 2025

The Largest EV Companies in 2024

The Largest Target Date Funds

Here's How Many Tesla Superchargers Are in All 50 States

The Biggest Sports Betting Companies

Sports Betting Tax Revenue by State

The Fastest-Growing Energy Sources

Congressional Stock Trading: Who Trades and Makes the Most

These Are Billionaires' Favorite Tech Stocks

These Are Billionaires' Favorite Energy Stocks

These Are Billionaires' Favorite Consumer Staples Stocks

These Are Billionaires' Favorite Healthcare Stocks

These Are Billionaires' Favorite Finance Stocks

The Largest ETF Issuers

SPAC Statistics for 2024

The Number of EV Chargers in Each State

Survey: How Investors Are Using Generative AI

The Average Social Security Check

Retirement Income Sources: Where Do Most Retirees Get Their Income From?

Retirement Savings Gap Statistics: Are Americans Ready for Retirement?

529 Plan Statistics: Average 529 Plan Balance, Usage Rates, and More

AI in Earnings Calls: How the Largest Companies Are Talking About Generative AI

The Companies With the Most Generative AI Patents -- and Why Investors Should Care

The AI Stocks Hedge Funds Love the Most

AI Adoption Statistics: How Many Businesses Are Using AI?

Inflation Rate Statistics by Year, Category, and Region

The Magnificent Seven's Market Cap Vs. The S&P 500

Space Launch Statistics: Commercial Launches, SpaceX, and More

How Much Are AI Companies Spending on Data Centers?

How Much Data Center Revenue Do AI Companies Bring In?

Stock Buyback Statistics

The U.S. Trade Balance With Every Country

Steel and Aluminum Tariffs: Which Countries Does the United States Import the Most From?

Tariff and Trade Investigation Tracker

How Tariffs on Mexico, Canada, and China Could Impact Commodity Prices

The Largest Financial Companies by Market Cap in April 2025

The Largest Healthcare Companies by Market Cap in April 2025

The Largest Industrials Companies by Market Cap in April 2025

The Largest Consumer Discretionary Companies by Market Cap in April 2025

The Largest Materials Companies by Market Cap in April 2025

The Largest Real Estate Companies by Market Cap in April 2025

The Largest Communications Services Companies by Market Cap in April 2025

The Largest Energy Companies by Market Cap in April 2025

The Largest Consumer Staple Companies by Market Cap in April 2025

The Largest Utilities Companies by Market Cap in April 2025

Automobile Trade Statistics: Imports, Exports, and American Content

Copper Tariffs: Which Countries Does the United States Import the Most From?

Pharmaceutical tariffs: Which countries does the U.S. Import the most from?

Rare earths trade statistics: U.S. Sources and import reliance

Semiconductor trade statistics: U.S. Imports, exports, and end uses

AI Is Accelerating A New Era Of Public Sector Innovation

The advancement of generative AI marks a technology paradigm shift impacting every part of the public sector. A newly released study Google commissioned with GovExec highlights the pervasiveness of this technology as 94% of respondents reported they plan to use AI in their department or agency in the immediate future. Brent Mitchell, Vice President of Go-to-Market at Google Public Sector said, "We stand at this pivotal moment in time. This is a new era of American innovation where AI is reshaping every aspect of our daily lives." 

Ushering in a new era of innovation

While a majority of state and local government respondents to the newly released study Google commissioned with GovExec believe AI will improve overall efficiency and productivity, some of the biggest concerns surround skilled staff. The solution? Combine the deep policy expertise of public sector analysts and staff with the technical expertise of industry partners. In fact, 98% of respondents indicated they will rely on external resources to implement AI.

Strategic partnerships and collaboration offer state and local governments a path to greater efficiency, streamlining access to citizen services and providing personalized engagements by tapping into the incredible strides industry has already made in AI and other emerging technologies. It's not just about creating cutting-edge technology, it's about accelerating the adoption of those technologies in a way that benefits the nation.

For Google, "we are really focused on building a stronger, safer, more competitive America in this AI era — that is our mission," Mitchell said. "We are going to deliver mission outcomes, but we are going to do it with a unique full-stack approach to AI."

This approach requires advancing not just AI itself, but all of the foundational layers supporting it. From data centers and chips, to developer training and productivity, to research and model development, to the platform itself, every part of the ecosystem surrounding AI solutions will be impacted by secure, integrated solutions enabling accelerated innovation. Such an all-encompassing approach drives efficiency at every level. 

Taking pilots to mission-critical deployment

Several recent use cases illustrate the impact AI is already having on the public sector landscape. Covered California, partnering with Google and Deloitte, leveraged Document AI to automatically validate 84% of documents in real-time. This enables the organization to verify 50,000 documents per month. 

The partnership also enabled Covered California to streamline security and compliance with Assured Workloads, a Google Cloud solution that automatically supports FedRAMP compliance, and Google Security Operations, which scans all log information, signatures and threats to eliminate security blind spots and proactively safeguard against attacks.  

In Missouri, through partnerships with Google Public Sector and Quantiphi, the Missouri Department of Social Services implemented virtual agents and saw a 70% reduction in average wait time. The virtual agents can respond to 32,000 requests per month, and only about half elect to move forward and speak with a live agent. 

Vertex AI Platform is particularly critical to optimizing generative AI development and accelerating AI application development and delivery. Vertex AI is a fully managed and unified platform for developing and deploying secure AI agents, applications and models to rapidly deliver solutions at scale. Using Vertex AI, public sector organizations can streamline operations, empower government workers and, ultimately, accelerate service delivery to the benefit of the community.

Vertex AI provides access to Google's latest Gemini models, now natively multimodal, and Gemma open models. With Gemini, it's possible to process up to 2 billion tokens in a single product. This translates to reasoning more than 3,000 pages of text in one product. 

"You're trying to navigate a pile of paperwork, or, say, a stack of invoices — you can do it with no special prompting," said Jason Gelman, Director of Product Management for Vertex Generative AI at Google Cloud. "You can also process two hours of video with audio at the same time."

So many state and local government functions require processing and analyzing seemingly endless amounts of paperwork. With the help of AI, these processes can become significantly faster and more efficient, giving time back to human agents to devote to higher-level tasks. 

Consider disability claims, for example, Gelman said. Using Gen AI capabilities, "for agency workers, we're helping shorten the time to process claims, and for citizens, we're helping submit claims and get your benefits faster."

New York State's AI-powered technology transformation

Ahead of the Gen AI Live & Labs event, Google Public Sector and the State of New York announced a first-of-its-kind partnership through which New York State employees will have access to advanced technology tools to help them enhance disaster recovery, service delivery and overall digital transformation. At the event, Dru Rai, Chief Information Office of New York State, shared his vision for the outcomes of this partnership. 

"At the end of the day, we serve New Yorkers and our goal is very simple: [enhancing] quality of service, speed of service and cost of service," Rai said. "They tell me you can't have all three at the same time, but that's what we try to do."

Successfully implementing AI requires "peeling the onion back," optimizing layer by layer, he said, mirroring Google's full-stack approach. Employees will have access to transformative AI tools, but "first you have to train employees, then you have to train the model, then you peel the next onion, then those models have to be trained in context."   

Government regulations and compliance needs bring added complexity to this process. For example, in New York, data from certain agencies cannot, by law, be shared with other agencies. So how can government technologists share learnings and maximize efficiencies while contending with legally required silos?

By "creating private models which can do all these things, and yet understanding the limitations of these models and making sure that … we don't cross the line when it comes to applying the law," Rai said. 

As Rai touched on various use cases — processing hundreds of thousands of transactions ingested per minute, enhancing customer experience, implementing human-centered design and modernizing systems — he noted that, "in almost every scenario, Gen AI can help. It won't be perfect, but it will be a great starting point."

The key to modernization, he added, is not simply rewriting what was written on mainframe, but thinking differently, changing the whole business process, meeting citizens where they are and offering the right omnichannel experience to help them get to where they need to go. 

While AI opens up many possibilities, it's not a panacea. AI implementation needs to be thoughtful and planned-out. It's not enough to have a "fancy model," Rai said, without data quality that's up to par, specific outcomes to work toward and the right solutions to meet goals.

"Start with the goal, then apply the model, train the model, pull the data, fix the data, train your people, and then hopefully you get the goal," Rai advised. "This tool is not going to give you a goal, this is a 'how.' You still need to define your goal, you still need your use cases, and the human beings are going to drive these tools."  

This is the first in a series of articles based on Google Public Sector Gen AI Live & Labs, in collaboration with GovExec, which convened industry experts and leaders across city and state governments, as well as higher education, to discuss this new era of innovation. To help keep you at the forefront of the latest advancements, sign up today to receive the Google Public Sector Newsletter.

IT Companies Are Struggling Under Pricing Pressure, Shift In Payment Models

Pricing pressures and cost optimisation demands from various industry verticals are having an effect on the performance of IT companies, and this is being seen as a larger global trend that is intensifying, leading enterprises to prioritise operational cost rationalisation over discretionary technology spending.

Pricing models are also shifting away from long term contracts to usage-based payments and shorter contract periods.

During their respective earnings call, each company talked about growing pressure from different verticals. While Infosys said price pressure remained stable in Q4, HCL Tech reported an impact in retail and manufacturing, including auto. C. Vijayakumar, CEO and MD at HCL Tech said this impact will spill over to all verticals very quickly.

Wipro said the manufacturing and automotive sector is calling for reduced costs while TCS reported cost optimisation demands from consumer business group, healthcare and life sciences, and the BFSI verticals.

"The Consumer Business Group saw heightened caution and delays in discretionary projects, especially in the US. This was driven by the significant drop in consumer sentiment in February, which preceded changes in global trade and tariffs creating a domino effect on retail CPG and TTH industries... In healthcare, deals are taking longer to close. Customers are moving cautiously and prioritising critical business initiatives. Growth programs are being either postponed or timelines are being reassessed," said K Krithivasan, CEO at TCS.

The commentaries by companies are in line with Greyhound Research's observations that pricing pressure is most acute in capital-intensive sectors, where technology costs have to directly compete with core operational investments.

According to the Greyhound Sector Pulse 2025, 66 per cent of manufacturing CIOs and 61 per cent of BFSI CIOs renegotiated technology contracts mid-term to preserve margins.

The manufacturing CIOs now insist on shorter contract durations (under three years) while the BFSI CIOs favour elastic, usage-based pricing models over fixed annual licensing. Both sectors are championing pay-as-you-go pricing models over traditional capex-heavy deployments.

"Notably, 39 per cent of manufacturing CIOs are blending IT procurement with operational procurement teams to enforce financial discipline—a significant structural shift in enterprise IT governance. Sector dynamics are amplifying technology cost scrutiny," said Sanchit Vir Gogia, Chief Analyst and CEO at Greyhound Research.

"That is a sense we have based on just doing some analysis on how each customer is impacted and what will that impact mean to both upstream and downstream in their value chain. I think it's something which is going to be broad-based. It might show up in Retail and Manufacturing to start with, but it's only a quarter lag before it has an impact on other verticals," he said.

In terms of a solution, companies appear to be turning towards GenAI to help with cost optimisation. Data from Greyhound showed that among Fortune 2000 CIOs, 58 per cent are renegotiating current contracts, while 43 per cent are actively considering best-of-breed over bundled platform purchases to control costs. Meanwhile, 34 per cent are experimenting with hybrid procurement models such as FinOps-managed IT consumption to reduce unpredictable outlays.

On an annual basis, India's IT sector (Tata Consultancy Services or TCS, Wipro, Infosys and HCL Tech) grew 50 bps but declined sequentially. Wipro managed to keep margins flat at 17.5 per cent while TCS and Infosys reported a 30 bps decline. HCL Tech slipped to 17.9 per cent from 19.5 per cent in the previous quarter.

Stating that IT companies' revenue majorly comes from managed services and discretionary spends, Ashutosh Sharma, Vice President and Research Director at Forrester, said, "Managed services deals used to be fairly profitable. Over a period of time, due to automation, etc., the profits from these deals fell to single-digit or low double-digit margins. So, companies were making their numbers were through discretionary spends."

"Until last calendar year, the numbers were looking good in terms of the deal numbers. But last quarter, many of those deals started to fall behind. The new deals coming in are more of a top-up in the form of a managed services relationship. So, this supply dried up, putting a lot of margins under pressure," he added.

Sharma said this pressure will remain until people start spending again, leading companies to postpone all the expenses.

Published on April 27, 2025

---