Abstract. The article highlights global high-tech sector trends in 2022. Slowdown is seen on some of the most important markets (especially consumer electronics) with rising challenges for the internet sector, pharmaceuticals, and civilian aerospace. Simultaneously, one can see only anemic rise of research and development expenditures, sharp fall of venture investments, and downturn on high-tech stock markets (with crash of Big Tech market value as most important event). However, analysis reveals that 2022 was rather a trigger for changes of the high-tech sector that were caused by medium-to-long term challenges. End of the pandemics stopped skyrocketing investments in the digital technologies and companies, as well as growth of sales of vaccines and other COVID-related medicaments (key drivers of the Big Pharma revenues in 2020–2021). Meanwhile inflation hit consumption — and Federal Reserve’s actions caused problems for venture markets. Despite 2022 was not a real crisis, it formed conditions for in-depth, structural changes of the high-tech sector for the years to come. Among factors supporting this change are geopolitics and techno-nationalism, affecting microelectronics and other digital technologies; cleantech boom in the times of turbulence on the energy markets; end of the decade-long extensive growth model of the internet corporations — with rising regulatory actions against monopolistic, social, and political risks of the digital tech sector.