Most businesses are heading into 2025 with a renewed sense of optimism, according to new research, with 96% of UK business owners and directors surveyed feeling optimistic about their business succeeding in the new year.

The nationwide survey by Speakers Corner found that, despite the instability of the business landscape in the last 12 months, the majority of business owners and directors are optimistic about their business succeeding in 2025 - a significant rise of 19% compared to this time last year when only 77% of business owners felt the same way about 2024.

Its encouraging to see so many more businesses feeling optimistic about their success in 2025, Nick Gold, Managing Director of Speakers Corner said. He added: What were seeing from the research is that there seem to be three main reasons for the increase in positivity a new government, less stress and a feeling of preparedness for embracing AI.

Over four out of five (85%) business owners surveyed say they felt positive about the impact of the new government on their business and over half (54%) expressed feeling very positive.

As 2025 gets underway, 94% of businesses say they feel like their business is prepared enough to adopt or scale up their AI. 58% felt very prepared and only 2% feel unprepared.

Nick said: Whether their optimism is well-founded will become clear as we progress through the year, but its heartening to know so many businesses are starting the year with confidence."