Stipe Plejic – Venture Builder | President StoneBlock | CEO Endemic.
After participating in most relevant art conferences and industry discussions last year, such as Art and Business, Art and Tech and Art and Finance—organized by the biggest players in the art industry like Delloite, ArtNova and Christie’s—and as someone who built a digital art marketplace, I want to share what 2025 brings to the art industry.
For those who are not active art market participants: Art is one of the rare industries that has not been updated for centuries. Every other industry underwent massive digitalization and modernization. In the taxi industry, we’ve seen Uber, Bolt and Grab; in the hospitality sector, we have Airbnb, Expedia and Booking. Every industry has cases like this, yet art is still old-fashioned and closed off.
Art is ready for the next update together with technology benefits, like blockchain technology, NFT technology and AI. Already, some traditional art auction houses have more than 80% of auctions online.
The Second Cycle Of NFTs
We experienced the first NFT cycle—I call it the “innovation cycle,” where we experienced massive hype around NFTs in general. This was just the discovery of how this technology could be utilized across many industries. One of the main utilizations and—maybe the most suitable and fundamental one—is art.
Among art, I see NFT utility in real estate, music, fashion and luxury, sport, gaming, metaverse and virtual reality and whole digital assets and digital identity/verification space. That cycle and hype have been driven by web3 market participants together with big brand involvements like Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Nike, Dolce Gabbana, Rolex, Adidas and others. In the art sector, those brands are MoMa, Sotheby’s and Christie’s, which sold the art piece “Everydays: The First 5000 Days” for $69 million.
We experienced this cycle during 2021 and 2022, and then we entered the prolonged bear market for NFTs during the second part of 2022, 2023 and 2024. I expect that trend is going to change this year, and we will see a second NFT cycle with more mainstream utility and better-experienced participants in the market.
Digital Markets For Digital Art
The financial perspective of the art sector is largely untapped. Most assets are not utilized yet, and I see a huge opportunity for startups and digital platforms that are tailored to the artist and the collectors. Creating a connective tissue between the two parties will grow art exposure and offer opportunities to promote artists’ work and their brands.
Digital art is on the rise. Young students even learn to paint on digital screens in many art schools all over the globe, opening huge market space that we didn’t have before. On the other hand, we have collectors who prefer digital rather than traditional. Most of them are participants of the younger generation (Millennial generation and Gen-Z), and the concept of digital ownership is much more present and accepted.
AI—Here To Stay?
AI is a major technology trend at the moment and with seemingly applications in every industry.
We in Endemic made AI curation, AI search, AI recommendation and last but not least—AI art agent, which I see as the most promising AI tool. That would be a next-generation curator who helps us and navigates us through the art pieces, art styles and artists.
There are a lot of discussions in the art industry if AI generative art could be considered as art. There are supporters of both theories.
I would rather support art made directly by artists as art, which could be made on canvas or on the screen, but this trend will change because there is huge traction around AI generative art. There are a variety of ways AI is already being used by artists—sometimes, segments are made by AI but composed by the artists, and other times, pieces can be entirely AI. The ethics of AI use in art will undoubtedly be a discussion as we move through 2025 and beyond.
Art Finance As An Industry
We are also missing art financial products and derivatives, and they can open an entirely new art financial sector. Because investors would like to have them in their portfolios but do not have proper exposure tools. There is a need to create tools that enable collectors and investors to maximize the potential of their art portfolios.
The collaboration between the art world and the tech industry is bound to take off this year.
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