We Tracked 20 Tech Trends Across Real Data Sources. Here's What's Actually Hot Right Now.

AI Agents is the strongest signal in our trend tracker right now. Not because someone wrote a hot take about it. Because the data says so.

We built a trend tracking engine at Inqvey that scans real-time data sources to identify what's actually trending in technology. Not opinions. Not vibes. Real, verifiable activity from developers, investors, researchers, and enterprises.

Here's what we found for AI Agents.

Hacker News: 674 stories, 3,678 points

Hacker News is where the tech community discusses what matters. 674 stories about AI Agents in the last 14 days, with 3,678 total upvotes. That's a massive amount of attention from developers and technical founders. HN activity tends to precede mainstream adoption by 1-3 months.

GitHub: 791 new repos, 150,300 stars

791 new repositories created in the last 30 days. Developers aren't just talking about AI Agents, they're building. 150,300 stars across those repos means the projects are getting real traction. GitHub creation velocity is typically a 3-12 month leading indicator of market adoption.

Y Combinator: 25 startups across 4 batches

25 YC-backed companies working on AI Agents, spread across 4 recent batches. When Y Combinator funds 25 startups in a single category, that's serious conviction from the most influential startup accelerator in the world.

Stack Overflow: 8 questions

Relatively low compared to other sources, which tells us something important: developers are building AI Agents but the tooling ecosystem is still maturing. Stack Overflow questions typically pick up as technology moves from experimentation to production deployment.

Academic Research: 291 papers, 2,800 citations

291 papers published on AI Agents recently, with 2,800 citations. Academic research is usually the earliest signal. The fact that researchers are publishing heavily means the theoretical foundation is solid and applied work is accelerating.

SEC Corporate Filings: 3 disclosures

3 mentions in SEC 10-K/10-Q filings. This is the newest signal and the most significant. When public companies disclose a technology to regulators, they consider it material to their business. This number is small now but it's a strong validation signal. For comparison, Generative AI already has hundreds of SEC mentions, and AI Agents is following the same early pattern.

What this convergence means

When developers are building, the community is discussing, investors are betting, researchers are publishing, and enterprises are disclosing all at the same time, that's real market movement, not hype.

This level of convergence historically precedes mainstream adoption within 3-6 months.

The gap that tells a story

The interesting gap is between GitHub activity (791 repos) and SEC filings (3). Developer tooling is way ahead of enterprise adoption. That gap usually closes as the tooling matures. If you're building in the AI Agents space, you're early, and that's a good position.

Compare this to Generative AI, which has the opposite pattern: heavy SEC disclosure but relatively fewer new GitHub repos. Generative AI is enterprise-driven. AI Agents is developer-driven. Both are real, but they'll play out differently.