The biggest technological failures of 2025

This year, I decided to divide the text into two categories – world and Poland. Of course, some of the things will concern both our country and the entire globe, but I would also like to include a few things that directly concern us. Well, let’s get down to business.

It is impossible not to start with the obvious issue, i.e. RAM prices. Although this is a topic that came up only a few weeks ago, it is definitely the biggest blunder or problem of 2025 and the next. There is a shortage of modules, their prices are rising to almost astronomical amounts, and this is just the beginning.

Where did this come from? To put it simply, the AI ​​boom is to blame. Orders for data centers to support artificial intelligence are so large that memory companies have transferred their processing capacity from DRAM to HBM. For this reason, there is a lack of traditional modules for the consumer market. And since supply is low and demand is high, prices rise because there will be people who decide to buy it anyway.

The worst thing is that this situation may last even several years and it does not only affect the computer market. Lower availability and high prices will also affect smartphones, tablets, graphics cards, SSD drives, consoles and, indirectly, many other devices. Virtually all electronics will go up in price. Can anything be done about it? These hopes are rather vain, there may even be a regression and we will pay more for less memory than before.

In 2025, there were two serious accidents. We are, of course, talking about Amazon Cloud Services and Cloudflare. In both cases, this resulted in the unavailability of thousands of websites and services around the world. The ones that went down included Reddit, Slack, Zoom, Snapchat, but also Apple Music, Tidal, PlayStation Network, Xbox and Steam.

How did this even happen? In the case of AWS, an unfortunate set of events was to blame. Two automation systems tried to update the same DNS record at the same time. As a result, they overwrote each other, which led to a glitch.

In the case of Cloudflare, it was about changing permissions in one of the database systems. This generated many entries in the “feature file”, doubling its size. The file has been distributed to the machines. Meanwhile, the software running on them has a limitation on the size of the feature file. It doubled in size, causing the software to crash and ultimately shutting down much of the global internet

This is quite a distant topic, from January 2025. Some may have forgotten about him, but we remember. New NVIDIA Blackwell chips, designed for artificial intelligence, had a manufacturing defect. This caused overheating and problems with stable operation. In fact, the Greens delayed shipments, and some giants (including Microsoft and Google) began to withdraw or reduce orders.

Reports indicate that each chip consumed as much as 400-600 W of power, and some could reach up to 1,200 W, i.e. twice the designed limits. This generated enormous amounts of heat, which even advanced liquid cooling systems could not cope with. Ultimately, NVIDIA managed to at least partially cope with the problem.

There’s no doubt that 2025 wasn’t the best year for Xbox. The console still sells poorly (twice as bad as PlayStation 5). It lacks exclusive games that would encourage purchase. Even titles that were supposed to be a strong argument for Xbox turned out to be a fiasco. Multiplatform productions turned out to be the best, but that was not enough to choose Microsoft’s console.

Anyway, let’s take a look at several games that were released under the Microsoft banner. Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 was literally run over by players. Avowed turned out to be weak. Indiana Jones received good reviews, but was not a huge hit. South of Midnight went virtually unnoticed. Even The Outer Worlds 2 failed.

The icing on the cake was the increase in Xbox Game Pass prices to a level that turned out to be unacceptable for many players. It is true that the Premium package (previously Standard) has remained unchanged, but for Ultimate you have to pay over 55 percent. more (increase from PLN 73.99 to PLN 114.99). For some, this was the nail in the Xbox coffin.

In fact, I could write a completely separate article about AI-related failures and I would have more than enough material. However, I will not write about each case separately. I will mention a few of the most important ones, placing them in the general category of artificial intelligence.

Let’s start with Grok, a model created by the X platform. At some point, the brakes completely let go and he started behaving almost like a famous Austrian painter. In fact, at one point he called himself MechaHitler. Grok turned out to be an extreme anti-Semite, repeated conspiracy theories about Jews and insulted users. Ultimately, everything was removed and the model was improved, but Elon Musk admitted that it was the users’ fault.

Another AI-related failure is, of course, the implementation of ChatGPT 5. It was supposed to be a completely new quality. The model was supposed to cope with more advanced tasks, including mathematics and programming. However, users were not satisfied. The new version turned out to be devoid of emotions. The AI ​​responded in a cold, painfully mechanical manner. OpenAI was forced to retire the new model and reinstate ChatGPT 4o. Over time, version 5.1 was released, which turned out to be much better and more human.

We also cannot forget about one more thing, which is embedding AI wherever possible. This was probably felt the most by Microsoft, which made a clear shift towards Copilot last year. This did not appeal to users, who demanded that Windows 11’s problems be fixed first, instead of forcing artificial intelligence. As if that wasn’t enough, Microsoft’s AI also appeared on LG TVs. Firefox also announced a stronger focus on artificial intelligence, but the new boss quickly announced that it would be possible to turn it off.

There have been a few smartphone-related mishaps in 2025. Again, there’s no point in writing about each of them individually, so I’m putting them in one general category.

The topic of The Trump Mobile T1 Phone is certainly not to be missedi.e. a phone signed with the name of the current president of the United States. This was announced in June, but was supposed to go on sale in September. The device was advertised as being made in the USA. It quickly turned out that it was nothing more than a rebranding of an ordinary ODM from China. What’s worse, it’s December, and there was no telephone. People who pre-ordered and paid a $100 advance payment may never see the smartphone in person.

I don’t know if you will agree with me, but this year’s premieres of ultra-thin smartphones, including, above all, Apple iPhone Air and Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge, can certainly be considered a failure. What failed in them? Many things. Although the idea seems right, the implementation is poor. Both devices fail in terms of performance, mainly due to heat dissipation issues and constant throttling. They also have severely truncated cameras and, at the same time, absurdly large islands that protrude above the housing. The sales results of both models show that there is either no future for such phones or it is still too early.

You can also complain about the iPhone 16e, which debuted in February 2025. Mainly because the cheapest iPhone is still ridiculously expensive for what it offers. In Poland, the cheapest model with 128 GB of memory costs over PLN 2,500. The 256 and 512 GB versions cost PLN 3,100 and PLN 3,800. What do we get in return? Among other things, the 60 Hz screen, which is embarrassing compared to the price of the phone. Maybe the iPhone 16e isn’t such a bad phone, but it’s simply too expensive. Moreover, it is much more expensive than its predecessor, the iPhone SE from 2022.

The above examples do not exhaust the entire topic. There were definitely more mishaps and problems in the world of technology in 2025. It is impossible to describe them all while keeping the text size reasonable. Therefore, I will only mention a few of them in points. These include:

• Restructuring/bankruptcy of iRobot
• No Apple Intelligence
• Trump’s ban on NVIDIA chips, which led to a breakthrough in Chinese solutions, including EUV technology
• A humanoid robot that is controlled and cannot do anything on its own

The perovskite scandal was definitely the most controversial in the world of Polish technology. It’s a bit of a word against word situation and it’s hard to say who is right here. Dawid Zieliński certainly did not fare well during the interview on Channel Zero, which did not win him any fans. However, it is difficult not to get the impression that this is a matter of second, or perhaps even third meaning.

What is it really about? Olga Malinkiewicz developed the technology of printed perovskites (ultra-light, translucent and flexible photovoltaic cells). She founded the Saule company. In 2020, Columbus Energy and the DC24 ASI fund joined it. The goal was simple – investment and commercialization of a revolutionary solution. In total, the project was supported with PLN 270 million. The problem is that despite numerous promises, mass production has not yet started.

Investors accuse Malinkiewicz of mismanagement of funds, huge costs and misleading. The latter, in turn, throws the ball away and claims that investors blocked public financing, forced unfavorable contracts, and built the factory in a field, not in the city, in order to doom the project to failure. The company is in a legal dispute on many fronts. Among other things, there is a fight for control over patents, and Poland is losing its chance to be a world leader in perovskites.

Although it was already known that nothing would probably come of it, still only in July 2025 did Intel officially announce that it was withdrawing from investments in Poland. And we were talking about an astronomical 4.6 billion dollars. As part of it, a semiconductor testing and integration plant was to be established near Wrocław (in Miękinia), which was to cooperate closely with the also planned factory in Germany. However, the crisis at Intel caused the company to completely withdraw from it.

This is a blunder from literally the last days of 2025. The Ministry of Digitization promised to make part of the source code of the mObywatel application available. The word was apparently kept, but it was implemented in a way that raises great doubts and sometimes even laughter.

First of all, the code is very limited and practically only describes the elements of the user interface. There is nothing that would be responsible for other elements, including cryptography, connectivity to servers or writing and reading local data. Therefore, it is difficult to provide a meaningful analysis that would allow for finding security gaps. More can be achieved by decompiling the package downloaded from the Play Store.

In addition, the Ministry of Digital Affairs has decided to make code review significantly more difficult. This is only available on the official website, where you need to log in with a Trusted Profile. As if that wasn’t enough, we are automatically logged out of the website after 10 minutes. There is also no ZIP file to download. The code was not made available in the form of a repository, which was apparently promised. This ultimately happened, but on the initiative of the users themselves, not the government.

Just like in the case of the world, in the case of Poland it is worth mentioning slightly smaller mistakes in the sub-points. Here I would mention:

• Another year in Plus without 5G in the C-Band band
• Data leak from EuroCert
• Allegro and InPost fight
• Polexit propaganda and AI-Influencers
• Poland is the most frequently attacked country in the world (ransomware)

And what mistakes do you think were the biggest in 2025? You can vote in two of our surveys (separate for World and Poland).