Smart Cities & Utilities in 2025: From Hype to Impact

2025 is about to come to an end. It’s been a year in which many trends from 2024 persisted, the focus of some verticals has been made clearer and in which AI has had its victories, but also, its letdowns. When it comes to a solution that stood out in 2025, we must mention early wildfire detection. Utilities and cities have invested in these solutions and companies selling them, are thriving. We found many success examples throughout the year. Google entered the arena with the launch of FireSat, a satellite constellation to spot fires, Cyprus deployed AI-powered fire detection stations to strengthen monitoring, Colombia turned to OroraTech’s satellite solution to find fires, SenseNet raised $14 million and Pano AI raised $44 million… With summers being hotter and drier each year, we’re bound to continue to see utilities and cities turning to early wildfire detection solutions in 2026. In 2024, many water utilities hit the one million smart water meters deployment mark. This trend has persisted. The deployment of Advanced Metering Infrastructures is still a focus for water. In 2025, we saw the US city of Kalamazoo allocating 2 million dollars for the deployment of water meters, Calisen Group and EMG partnered to roll out smart water meters in Germany with a €100 million budget…. The concern of water is also about preserving resources and reducing losses, as energy bills for treating and distributing water are big. And speaking of utilities, streetlighting is modernizing around the world. Right now, budgets in countries like the US are flowing once again, and smart controllers are being deployed at scale. Spain is also investing heavily in modernizing its streetlighting with €155 million for municipal upgrades. This, as we know, should open the door to other tech. Streetlights make for the perfect base for smart solutions. They can serve as power and communication spots to any type of sensor, like air quality ones or cameras. However, we’re not seeing much of this happening, and other verticals are thriving without needing streetlights, so the beyond lighting is sort of a myth at the moment. But utilities are interested by smart cities, we’ll see what happens in 2026. Vision AI continued to dominate the industry throughout 2025. It’s all to do with the capabilities it offers: from flood to wildfire detection, traffic management and monitoring, safety, waste management… Endless functionalities. In the US, the main trend for cameras is security, but a lot of the use cases there, as well as other territories like South America or Europe, revolve around traffic management and monitoring. But in AI, it wasn’t all good news. Generative AI has been a let down for many. We heard this at the SCEWC, where interviewees told us it was hype, but not reality, and MIT published a report in which they explained gen AI fails to meet high expectations. It’s hard to see a use in viable applications right now. But, there’s still time to prove its worth. And finally, when it comes to funding, there’s a lot of movement. However, a country where smart solutions tend to thrive, has seen its public spending go down: France. Spending decreased in the eurozone heavyweight due to political instability. But there’s still hope, as we’ve seen politicians make public comments about needing AI for waste management and street cleanliness. 2025 ends with a clearer picture of what works, what doesn’t and what still needs time to deliver. Early wildfire detection, vision AI and AMI deployments have cemented, another year, their place as essential tools, while generative AI reminded us that hype alone doesn’t translate into usefulness. Overall, the sector is maturing, becoming more selective and more outcome driven.