In 2023 and 2024, we've already witnessed foundational data quality, governance and architecture efforts, which will begin to take shape for many in 2025. Here is what's in store for 2025:

Data readiness has been a consistent theme over the last few years, with companies pouring money into data governance, privacy regulations and clean, streamlined data sets. Preparing a solid data foundation is essential for generative AI because it needs accurate, diverse and governed data to produce effective results, especially when using enterprise data with a large or small language model.

For the first half of 2025, most organizations will focus on achieving data readiness for their generative AI projects. Research from Informa TechTarget's Enterprise Strategy Group showed that, on average, organizations have 15 or more generative AI tools they plan to build and bring to market. Each has their own unique set of data to support their initiatives. Data readiness will continue to be an ongoing effort for each initiative, along with updating data and adding new data sources, including third-party data sets, to drive new insights. Third-party data will become more prevalent once generative AI applications launch and organizations want to add more diverse data.

The focus will not just be on making data "ready" but making it "AI-ready." AI models will need contextualized, annotated and accessible data in real time, which will accelerate the adoption of tools that can automatically tag, catalog and clean data for AI consumption. By mid-2025, we should see some tangible market penetration.