From the Metaverse to Brain-Computer Interfaces: The New Industrial Ecosystem Shaped by Technological Convergence in 2025
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As of December 2025, the global technology industry is experiencing a completely new paradigm as innovative technologies like the metaverse, brain-computer interfaces (BCI), quantum computing, and next-generation AI converge. According to market research firm Gartner, the technological convergence market is projected to grow rapidly from $320 billion in 2024 to $1.5 trillion by 2030, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 29.4%. Notably, these technologies are no longer developing individually but are forming a complementary ecosystem, creating synergies.
According to Meta (headquartered in Menlo Park, California), the Q4 2024 performance report showed that Reality Labs, the metaverse-related division, recorded a 42% increase in revenue year-over-year, reaching $4.8 billion. This growth is attributed to the popularization of VR/AR headsets and the metaverse platform’s monthly active users (MAU) surpassing 230 million. Simultaneously, NVIDIA (headquartered in Santa Clara, California) announced that its Omniverse series of AI acceleration chipsets for metaverse implementation achieved $6.7 billion in 2024 sales, accounting for 23% of total data center revenue.
However, more groundbreaking changes are evident in the rapid advancement of brain-computer interface (BCI) technology. Since Neuralink (headquartered in Fremont, California), founded by Elon Musk, began human clinical trials in the second half of 2024, the BCI market has been experiencing explosive growth. According to market research firm BrainBase Research, the global BCI market is expected to grow from $2.3 billion in 2024 to $15.6 billion by 2029, with the technological gap between medical and consumer BCIs rapidly narrowing.
At the core of this technological convergence are semiconductor companies like South Korea’s Samsung Electronics (headquartered in Suwon, Gyeonggi Province) and SK Hynix (headquartered in Icheon, Gyeonggi Province). Samsung Electronics reported Q3 2024 memory semiconductor sales of 17.5 trillion won, with 30% coming from high-performance memory (HBM, High Bandwidth Memory) products related to AI and the metaverse. Notably, Samsung’s HBM3E product has become a key component meeting the real-time data processing performance required for brain-computer interfaces and is set to be applied to hybrid systems linked with quantum computing from the first half of 2025.
New Business Models Created by Technological Convergence
The most prominent feature of technological convergence is the emergence of new business models that break down traditional industry boundaries. In the case of Microsoft (headquartered in Redmond, Washington), Azure, its cloud service, accounted for 42% of its $245 billion annual revenue in 2024, with a significant portion derived from providing metaverse infrastructure and AI services. Notably, Microsoft generates $149 per user in monthly subscription revenue from its ‘Mixed Reality Workspace’ solution, which combines HoloLens and Teams, demonstrating profitability three times higher than traditional office software licensing models.
Google’s (headquartered in Mountain View, California) parent company Alphabet is taking an even more ambitious approach. In its Q4 2024 earnings report, Alphabet announced a 78% increase in R&D investment in its Google Quantum AI division, raising it to $3.4 billion. This investment aims to build a ‘quantum-digital hybrid platform’ connecting the metaverse and AI based on the Willow chip, which has achieved quantum supremacy. This platform is slated for commercialization in the second half of 2025, with initial tests showing processing speeds 10,000 times faster than existing cloud computing for specific AI tasks.
Japan’s Sony (headquartered in Tokyo) is leveraging its unique strength in the convergence of entertainment and technology to establish a distinctive position. Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE), its gaming division, reported global sales of 6.3 million units for PlayStation VR2 in 2024, with metaverse gaming platform revenue increasing by 156% year-over-year to $8.9 billion. Furthermore, Sony is working on the ‘NeuroPlay’ project, integrating its proprietary brainwave detection sensors into PlayStation controllers, with a target launch in the first half of 2026.
Apple (headquartered in Cupertino, California) is taking a somewhat different approach. Although the Vision Pro, launched in June 2024, sold only 450,000 units, falling short of initial expectations, Apple has defined this as a ‘learning process’ and announced plans to integrate brain-computer interface features into the next-generation Vision Pro 2. Apple’s Chief Technology Officer (CTO) John Ternus declared at the December 2024 developer conference that “2025 will be the year Apple transitions from spatial computing to neural computing,” expanding the related R&D budget to $7.2 billion.
Changes in Market Dynamics and Competitive Landscape
As technological convergence accelerates, the competitive landscape of existing industries is changing rapidly. Notably, the ‘full-stack’ approach, encompassing hardware, software, content, and services, is emerging as a key element of competitive advantage. According to IDC’s (International Data Corporation) Q4 2024 report, the top five companies (Meta, Microsoft, Google, Apple, NVIDIA) in the metaverse-AI-BCI convergence market account for 67% of the total market, with a commonality in pursuing vertical integration strategies.
In the Chinese market, ByteDance’s (headquartered in Beijing) subsidiary PICO and Tencent (headquartered in Shenzhen) are exhibiting a unique competitive dynamic. PICO captured a 42% market share in the Chinese VR headset market in 2024, ranking first, with its ‘social metaverse’ platform PICO World surpassing 48 million monthly active users. Meanwhile, Tencent is employing a strategy to guide its existing 1.2 billion users into the metaverse through the ‘WeChatverse’ platform, integrated with WeChat, recording related revenue of 15.6 billion yuan (approximately $2.2 billion) in 2024.
In South Korea, Naver (headquartered in Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province) and Kakao (headquartered in Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province) are taking differentiated approaches. Naver’s subsidiary NAVER Z operates the metaverse platform ‘ZEPETO,’ which surpassed 400 million cumulative global subscribers, with 2024 revenue increasing by 89% year-over-year to 134 billion won. Particularly, ZEPETO, with 78% of its users being Gen Z, has established various revenue models such as virtual fashion, virtual concerts, and virtual education, achieving an average revenue per user (ARPU) of $4.2 per month.
Kakao is focusing on ‘AI Avatar’ services that combine AI and the metaverse, centered around Kakao Brain and Kakao Enterprise. The ‘Kakao i’ platform, launched in 2024, creates personalized AI avatars by learning users’ voices, expressions, and behavior patterns, securing 12 million users within six months of launch. Kakao’s AI division revenue reached 289 billion won in 2024, accounting for 18% of total revenue, with 60% coming from metaverse-related services.
From an investment perspective, venture capital and corporate investors are shifting their focus from individual technologies to technology convergence startups. In 2024, global investment in metaverse-AI-BCI convergence technology startups reached $48.7 billion, a 134% increase from the previous year. The largest investments were in ‘brain-metaverse interfaces’ with $8.9 billion, ‘quantum-AI hybrid computing’ with $6.7 billion, and ‘virtual-physical fusion robotics’ with $5.2 billion.
A particularly noteworthy case is the German startup NeuroLink GmbH (a separate company from Neuralink, headquartered in Berlin), which developed the ‘MetaBrain’ platform. This platform analyzes brainwaves in real-time to automatically adjust the environment in the metaverse according to the user’s emotional state, raising €230 million in a Series B round in 2024. Major German companies like BMW, Siemens, and SAP are utilizing this platform for employee training and product development, with initial tests showing a 340% improvement in learning efficiency compared to traditional VR training.
However, several challenges accompany this rapid technological convergence. The most significant issue is the protection of personal information and the ethical use of brain data. The European Union (EU) announced the ‘BCI Regulation Framework’ in December 2024, planning to introduce strict approval procedures for all technologies collecting brain data starting July 2025. This is expected to impose additional compliance costs on related companies, with market research firm Forrester predicting an average 18-month delay in the launch of BCI-related products in the European market.
From a technical perspective, ensuring interoperability between different platforms remains a significant challenge. Currently, Meta’s Horizon Worlds, Microsoft’s Mesh, and Google’s Immersive Stream each build independent ecosystems, making it difficult for users to have a consistent experience across platforms. To address this, the ‘Metaverse Standards Forum’ was established in September 2024, with 127 major tech companies participating in developing common standards. However, due to conflicting interests among companies, it is expected to take considerable time to establish practical standards.
As of the end of 2025, the trend of technological convergence is moving beyond the experimental stage into full-scale commercialization. Gartner predicts that by 2026, 30% of global companies will adopt work environments combining metaverse-AI-BCI, a trend expected to accelerate further in conjunction with the spread of remote work culture following the COVID-19 pandemic. Simultaneously, in the consumer market, global sales of consumer devices equipped with brain-computer interfaces are expected to surpass 50 million units by 2027, similar to the current smartwatch market size.
In conclusion, as of the end of 2025, the convergence of the metaverse, brain-computer interfaces, quantum computing, and AI is driving a paradigm shift that extends beyond mere technological advancement, expanding human cognitive abilities and blurring the boundaries between the digital and physical worlds. This transformation is restructuring existing industrial structures and creating a new economic ecosystem, with its impact on the global economy over the next five years expected to rival that of the internet’s emergence. However, addressing challenges such as technological standardization, ethical guidelines, and regulatory frameworks will be key to realizing this potential.
This analysis is provided for informational purposes only and is not intended as an investment recommendation or stock advice. Investment decisions should be made based on individual judgment and responsibility, and no liability is assumed for investment losses based on this content.
