In the title (The convergence engine: How nanotechnology enables AI, CRISPR, and quantum computing) for a December 31, 2025 Nanowerk Spotlight article, Michael Berger seemingly references K. Eric Drexler’s ground shaking 1986 book “Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology.” He goes on to provide an overview of the first half of the 2020 decade while offering his perspective on what the years 2026 – 2030 will bring with regard to nanotechnology, Note: Links have been removed,

As we close the final chapter of 2025, this Nanowerk Spotlight article marks a significant milestone in our coverage. We find ourselves standing at the midpoint of the decade: the ‘watershed year’ where the speculative promises of the early 2020s have matured into the industrial infrastructure of the late 2020s.

The first half of this decade was defined by a rapid acceleration in digitalization and the proof-of-concept phase for several frontier technologies. Since 2020, we have witnessed the dramatic rise of generative AI, the clinical validation of mRNA vaccine delivery and lipid nanoparticle drug delivery platforms, and the first industrial-scale qubit arrays. What was once considered the fringe of material science has now reached a commercial turning point.

Looking back at the last five years, nanotechnology has transitioned from a vertical research discipline into a horizontal multiplier. It has become the invisible substrate that accelerates the discovery and optimization of novel materials via AI-driven autonomous labs, facilitates the programming of biological systems, and provides the nanoscale memristive and neuromorphic architectures required to run AI systems more efficiently.

As we pivot toward 2026 and the second half of the decade, the focus is shifting from discovery to convergence. The articles we featured in our 2025 Nanowerk Spotlight series have increasingly highlighted this trend, showing that the most profound breakthroughs no longer happen in isolation but at the collision points between disciplines. In this final feature of the year, we explore how this Convergence Engine is not just a trend for 2025, but the blueprint for the remainder of the decade.

Introduction: The Substrate of the 2020s

In late 2023, a robotic laboratory at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory accomplished something that would have been unthinkable a decade earlier. The A-Lab, developed in collaboration with Google DeepMind, synthesized 41 novel inorganic compounds in just 17 days, operating around the clock without human intervention. Machine learning algorithms predicted which materials might be stable, proposed synthesis recipes by parsing decades of scientific literature, and robotic arms executed the experiments. When a synthesis failed, the system analyzed why, adjusted parameters, and tried again.

The results, published in Nature (“An autonomous laboratory for the accelerated synthesis of novel materials”), represented a fundamental shift in how materials are discovered: from months of manual trial-and-error to weeks of autonomous experimentation.

That same month, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Casgevy, the first therapy based on CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing, for patients with sickle cell disease. The approval was a landmark for genetic medicine—but it also highlighted a fundamental constraint.

Casgevy is an ex vivo therapy: a patient’s stem cells are extracted, edited outside the body using electroporation, and then reinfused. This approach works because hematopoietic stem cells can be safely removed and returned. But for the vast majority of tissues—the brain, lungs, liver, heart—extraction is impossible. Reaching those cells requires in vivo delivery: injecting gene-editing machinery directly into a living patient and guiding it to its target.

That is where lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) become essential. These spherical shells, roughly 100 nanometers in diameter, protect the therapeutic payload from degradation in the bloodstream and ferry it into cells. Without this nanoscale delivery infrastructure, the genetic code never arrives. The success of Casgevy, paradoxically, underscores what remains unsolved: how to deliver CRISPR to the 99% of tissues that cannot be edited on a benchtop.

These two breakthroughs, one in autonomous materials discovery, the other in genetic medicine, share a common thread: nanotechnology has transitioned from a vertical research discipline into a horizontal enabler. It is no longer simply about making things small; it is about providing the physical substrate on which other frontier technologies depend.

In this article, let’s examine three convergence pairs that illustrate how nanotechnology intersects with artificial intelligence (AI), biotechnology, and quantum computing.

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Berger summarized his insights and goes on to provide more detail, from the December 31, 2025 Nanowerk Spotlight article,

Key Takeaways: The Convergence of Nanotechnology

• From Vertical to Horizontal: Nanotechnology has matured from a standalone research niche into a universal horizontal substrate that physically enables the 2025 breakthroughs in AI, biotechnology, and quantum computing.
• AI-Driven Discovery Synergy: Self-driving laboratories, such as Berkeley’s A-Lab and the MINERVA platform, are utilizing machine learning to compress years of material science into days; notably, the A-Lab synthesized 41 novel compounds in just 17 days.
• The Hardware Loop: The relationship is reciprocal; while AI discovers new materials, nanoscale innovations like memristors and neuromorphic chips (e.g., Intel’s Loihi 2) provide the energy-efficient physical architecture required to run next-generation AI models.
• Foundational Delivery for Medicine: Nanotechnology is the non-negotiable prerequisite for genetic medicine. New platforms like the MK16 BLNP are now achieving what was previously impossible: delivering mRNA across the blood-brain barrier to treat neurological conditions in vivo.
• Industrializing Quantum Construction: The path to fault-tolerant quantum computing now relies on semiconductor nanofabrication. Recent 2025 results from Diraq and imec show that silicon spin qubits produced in standard 300mm foundries can exceed 99% gate fidelity, the critical threshold for error correction.
• From Specialty to Infrastructure: As we approach 2030, the ‘nano’ prefix is becoming redundant. Much like the internet, nanotechnology is becoming “invisible” infrastructure—assumed to be present in every major technological advancement.

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If you have the time, do read the December 31, 2025 Nanowerk Spotlight article; it is fascinating for anyone intrigued by possibilities for the future that are backed up by research.